Food, But Not In My Stomach Trivia Quiz

Answer: egg

This phrase pre-dates the egg-throwing at politicians days of the 1960s. The phrase was part of a script on a 1951-52 "Front Page Detective" television series. Some believe it dates back to vaudeville times when the audience would throw eggs (sometimes rotten ones) at particularly bad acts. Also slapstick skits at the time included breaking an egg on the forehead of the performer-victim, which was the equivalent of a pie in the face.

Some farmers from rural areas in America believe the phrase originates from working dogs getting into the hen-house and stealing eggs with the evidence seen on their faces afterwards.

Answer: ribs

A "twofer": a body part that is a food as well, though I prefer to keep my ribs intact thanks, as they protect vital organs. However I have no reservation about eating other species' ribs, especially if there is good BBQ sauce to go with them.
The origin of the phrase is unclear. It was popular in the Great Depression in the 1930s when food was scarce and whilst it has a meaning contemporaneously of a nutritious and filling food, it had a more literal meaning in the 30s: if food stuck to your ribs, they were no longer visible because you was not skinny enough for them to be seen.

Answer: pancake

"To be as flat as a pancake" meaning something is very flat, "as flat as a fritter", "as flat as a flounder', all date back to the 1800s though it is unsure of their origin and whether they came from British or American English, though "pancake" would suggest a British origin. A similar phrase, "As flat as a board" can be traced back to 17th century England.

In the 1970s "As flat as a pancake" was applied cruelly to young ladies with little busts. Thankfully that jibe seems to have been forgotten now.

"To be as flat as a pancake" has taken another meaning in recent times. It is now associated with feeling flat as in deflated or worse, depressed.

Answer: chip

The chip in these idioms are not potato chips but pieces of wood or timber.

There appears to be an American usage where someone spoiling for a fight would put a chip on his shoulder and invite people to knock it off. This origin is unsubstantiated.

A more plausible origin comes from Britain: Royal Navy Board notations for August 1739 included this ruling:
"Shipwrights to be allowed to bring [chips] on their shoulders near to the dock gates, there to be inspected by officers". This was a perk of the job, as workers were allowed to take small amounts of timber home as long as it could be carried under one arm. In 1756 a dockyard workers' strike occurred at Chatham in London. The letter records a comment made by a shipwright who was stopped at the yard's gates when a worker carried a large chip on his shoulder:
"Are not the chips mine? I will not lower them."

The report states the worker walked out with the wood still on his shoulder and others followed "Immediately the main body pushed on with their chips on their shoulders."

However, the phrase did not appear in print until the 1930s, in Somerset Maugham's "Gentleman in the Parlour":
"He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him."

Answer: salt

The phrase 'the salt of the earth' meaning "decent person" derives from the Bible, Matthew 5:13 (King James Version):

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men".

It appears the context, though, is excellence rather than ordinariness. This latter meaning fits with other salt idioms: distinguished diners are seated 'above the salt' and valued workers were 'worth their salt'. One could deduce, though, that salt was seen as being something valuable, certainly it has been used as currency in the past. This may be how the "decent" analogy came about but this explanation is by no means definitive.

Answer: apple

According to the Oxford Dictionary, "apple of my eye" refers to 'someone that one cherishes above all others'.

The King James Version of the Bible, translated in 1611, contains the English idiom "apple of my eye", but the Hebrew equivalent translates as "Dark part of the eye", meaning the pupil. The pupil connection appears to have found favour with Shakespeare, who wrote in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that Robin Goodfellow had acquired a flower with magical love-arousing properties, and dripped flower juice into a young man's eyes, saying "Flower of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid's archery, / Sink in apple of his eye". The "love" connection presumably leads to the "cherished" meaning of the idiom

Answer: chip

"Chip off the old block" is a phrase meaning the same as "like father, like son"

Chip in this case is stone or wood. The phrase "Chip OF the same block" dates back to 1621 In this contest it appears in the form of a sermon in Bishop Robert Sanderson of Lincoln:
"Am not I a child of the same Adam ... a chip of the same block, with him?" In this version of the phrase it appears to be referring to a block that one goes back to, in order to make another person.

The phrase 'chip OFF the old block' refers the parent, especially the father, being called an old block. The earliest reference is in "The Athens Messenger" an Ohio Newspaper from June 1870:
"The children see their parents' double-dealings, see their want of integrity, and learn them to cheat ... The child is too often a chip off the old block."

Answer: butter

Charles Dickens was perhaps the greatest inventor of English language words and phrases behind Shakespeare. He used this term in "The Pickwick Papers" (1836):
"At every bad attempt at a catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as 'Ah, ah! - stupid' - 'Now, butter-fingers' - 'Muff' - 'Humbug' - and so forth".

However there is an earlier reference and it appears that the butter-fingers analogy relates to clumsiness: "The English Housewife" by English writer Gervase Markham in 1615 said:

'First, she must be cleanly in body and garments; she must have a quick eye, a curious nose, a perfect taste, and ready ear; she must not be butter-fingered, sweet-toothed, nor faint-hearted - for the first will let everything fall; the second will consume what it should increase; and the last will lose time with too much niceness.

The idiom became popular in cricket when balls were dropped when hit in the air by lucky batsmen.

Answer: bread

"To take the bread out of his mouth" meaning, in English at least, to deprive some one of their livlihood, has an uncertain origin but it is likely to have its origins in France where "Oter le pain de la bouche" translates as "To take the bread from the mouth", but there it has two meanings: to prevent anyone getting a job, or taking one from him. This fits closely to the English meaning, and the English saying is probably derived from the French idiom.

The Italians have many idioms involving bread, being such a staple part of their lives. "Togliere il pane di bocca" (literally, to take the bread of out someone's mouth) one would think means the same as the French idiom, however in Italy, a more common version is "togliersi il pane di bocca" where the verb is reflexive which means figuratively one who sacrifices for other people. For example, a mother takes the bread out of her own mouth to feed her child.

Answer: vinegar

The origin for this phrase is not clear, but it is likely to have been derived from "sour grapes". As idioms, though, they have slightly different meanings. "Sour as vinegar" means someone is disagreeable or unfriendly. "Sour grapes" is more aligned with resentment, over an event but possibly a person. The origin of sour grapes can be traced back to Aesop whose fable "The Fox and The Grapes" tells the story of a fox who wanted to eat the grapes on the vine but could not reach them so the fox declared the grapes to be sour. In Harrison Weir's 1884 English translation of the fable, he has the fox saying, "The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought." This equates "sour" to "unripe".

There are biblical references to sour grapes in Miles Coverdale's Bible, (1535),Ezekial 18:2 What meane ye by this comon prouerbe, that ye vse in the londe of Israel, sayenge: The fathers haue eaten soure grapes, and the childres teth are set on edge?
This shows a different meaning to sour grapes, perhaps a bit more literal.

Regardless if we hear someone is as sour as vinegar, we are likely to try to avoid that person.. If we hear they have sour grapes we simply do not engage with that person over the sensitive topic.