Find It In the Past Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bee's knees

The origins of "bee's knees" come with a cloud of uncertainty but the most popular version is that it was one of a host of nonsense phrases that arose during the flapper era of the 1920s. The use of these nonsense terms as a description of excellence was highly fashionable during this period. There is conjecture that it was popular because of the rhyming structure of the phrase but this is given cold water by other terms that came forward at the time such as "snake's hips" and "the cat's whiskers". Initially, bee's knees was used as teasing fodder on the gullible. A bit like sending the new apprentice to the store room to collect a tin of striped paint or a bag of welding sparks. In 1906 a spoof report appeared in a New Zealand newspaper that reported that the cargo on board the ship SS Zealandia included "a quantity of post holes, three bags of treacle and seven boxes of bee's knees".

Thomas "Tad" Dorgan was best known for his comic strip "Indoor Sports" and worked for a number of newspapers in the early 1900s. He has been credited with the creation of a range of expressions that have since become part of the American vernacular. These include "dumbbell", to denote a stupid person, "for crying out loud", indicating astonishment, "applesauce" for nonsense and "nickel nurses" for misers. However, "bee's knees" was not to be found in any of his works.

The other phrases in the answer: "kluck" is a stupid person, "fly paper", a person who doesn't know when to leave and "pollywoppus" is meaningless stuff.

Answer: Cardsharp

There are some quarters that claim this is a nautical term, particularly smugglers who would keep their cargo hidden below deck, however, there is no evidence to support this claim.
The phrase "above board" is an indication that something is legitimate. In respect to card players the onus was placed upon them to keep their hands on top of the table in an effort to reduce or curtail their ability to cheat. The expression makes an early appearance in Beaumont and Fletcher's "The Custom of the Country" (1616):
"Yet if you play not fair play and above board too, I have a foolish gin here, I say no more." (Laying his hand upon his sword)

Answer: True

Bandy was a medieval sport played on ice that had elements of football (soccer) and hockey incorporated into it. It had the fast pace of ice hockey. However, the field dimensions were vast which kept body contact and stick work such as slashing and hooking to a minimum.

The Free Dictionary (on-line) will tell you that bandy means to throw back and forth, in other words, to toss something around. In much the same way that a ball is tossed back and forth by teammates and opponents within the game of bandy it was then extended to apply to words. Bandied around can also allude to an argument, an exchange of ideas or the exchange of gossip.

Answer: Macbeth

"All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?"

The use of swoop by Shakespeare in the verse is to indicate the sudden descent of a bird such as a bird of prey. However, in the common use of the phrase it is usually used to indicate a blow or a strike of some nature. Fell, in this instance, has the meaning of savage or ruthless. The common error in wording this phrase is to use the word fowl; i.e. "one fowl swoop" and whilst some fowl may "swoop" it is not commonly an associated action with them.

Answer: Sailors

Yes, it is a nautical term and, if you thought like I did, the sheets do not refer to the ship's sails. The sheets are the ropes tied to the corners of the sails to keep them attached to the ship. Should three of these detach or break off (they're flapping in the wind) then the ship loses control and is as navigable as a drunken sailor. The original expression was worded as "in the wind" rather than "to the wind" and it made its first appearance in literature during the early 1820s, most notably in "Real Life in London", an 1821 publication by Pierce Egan;
"Old Wax and Bristles" is about three sheets in the wind".
That line by itself didn't necessarily allude to drunkenness but an earlier entry, which only used two sheets, by the Reverend (of all people) Francis Asbury in his journal about his travels through Kentucky in 1813 describes;
"they were sometimes two sheets in the wind. O, that liquid fire!"

Sailors soon used that idiom as the basis for a scale of (in)sobriety;
One sheet = tipsy
Two sheets = drunk
Three sheets = falling over drunk
Four sheets = unconscious.

Nowadays the three sheets phrase is rarely used. Instead we hear terms such as "off his face", "blitzed" and "hammered".

Answer: A cephalopod

Cephalopods include, amongst others, the octopus, the cuttlefish and the squid. I'm stating the obvious here when I say that the squid, in its normal surrounds, is always damp. I mention the squid because it is the most common error that people make when using this phrase.

The squib (not the squid) is generally associated with fireworks. These are usually cylindrical in shape and have a paper fuse at one end. Get that fuse wet and that cracker becomes a fizzer (an anti-climax). Squib, as a satire, sarcastic person and firework, had their meanings published during the 16th century however, there is no evidence of the use of "damp squib" being used at that time.

The earliest publication to showcase the phrase is a commentary in the "Morning Post", a London newspaper, in March of 1837 which describes a certain member of parliament as lacking "fizz and splutter, after the fashion of a damp squib".

Answer: School teacher

To chance your arm means to take some form of a risk with the view that the outcome will create a benefit for you. Modern writers have tended to use the term in respect to boxers who, in the process of launching an attack on one side of an opponent may leave themselves exposed to a counter attack. An 1889 publication of a dictionary of slang by Barrere and Leland indicates that the phrase may be a tailor's term, however, they do not go further to provide any insight as to why this may be so. The earliest recordings of the term appear in the 1880s. Back then it was predominantly used as a military term where a calculated risk taken by an officer may see him either demoted or promoted. A demotion meant the removal of stripes from their arm. The term can also be found in Frederic Manning's book "The Middle Parts of Fortune" (1916), which focuses its attention on the fighting in the battles of Somme and Ancre;
"What does it matter if y'are killed? You've got to die someday. You've got to chance your arm in this life, an' a dam' sight more 'n your arm sometimes?"

One of the most popular stories as to the origin of this phrase is a 1492 feud between the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds, two very prominent Irish families. With the Butlers barricaded in St. Patrick's Cathedral the Earl of the Fitzgeralds came to realise that the feud was nonsense but he couldn't get the Butlers out of the church to formalise a peace. He cut a hole in the church door and placed his arm through as a sign of his good faith. Whilst this "Door of Reconciliation" is still on display at the church we struggle to recognise the story's validity as the origin of the expression because there is such a long gap (400 years) between it the term's first appearance in print. One would have expected it to appear with some degree of frequency in the intervening years to have some relevance.

Answer: True

The two phrases in question are "beating the bushes" and "beat around the bush". Beaters would walk though the scrub beating at the undergrowth to force birds and animals out into the open so that they could be netted or shot. Stemming from this is an informal North American term, "beating the bushes", that means searching thoroughly or seeking assiduously. A good example of it in use is; "Bill is certainly not beating the bushes in his quest for a job, the man is just bone lazy".

The beaters were also at risk because there was always the chance that there were dangerous animals such as wild boars in the bushes that could charge out and injure them. The more cautious of these employees would tend to keep their distance and use their poles to beat at the outskirts of bushes. Alternatively a beater may be put out that they were flushing out the creatures but missing out on the spoils and, as a consequence, would not attack the centre of the scrub. Hence the term beating about/around the bushes became a euphemism for hesitancy or a lack of willingness to be decisive.

Answer: Mutton

To give the cold shoulder is seen as a display of coldness toward another and, as for the above, (sadly) it is just a folk tale. The origin of the phrase is attributed to Sir Walter Scott, a writer who is also responsible for such idioms as "blood is thicker than water", "lock, stock and barrel" and "caught red handed". Cold shoulder first appears in Scott's work "The Antiquary", which was published in 1816;
"The Countess's dislike didna gang further at first than just showing o' the cauld shouther".
Scott would use the term again in his 1823 novel "St. Ronan's Wall";
"I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally".
To support the claim that Scott was the originator of the term (a) there were no appearances of the term in print prior to Scott and (b) since his publications it began to appear regularly, most notably in Charles Dickens' work "The Old Curiosity Shop" published in 1841.

Answer: Bullet

There is a common thought that biting the bullet emanated from the battlefields of the American Civil War. Patients would be given a bullet to bite on during field surgery because it was malleable and wouldn't break the patient's teeth. This is possible but it is also most unlikely. (i) The US Civil War started in 1861 (ii) Ether and chloroform, as anaesthetics, were introduced around 1846 and were issued to US military surgeons in 1849. There are photographs from the war years that show patients in field hospitals with cloths presumably soaked in anaesthetic placed over their mouths. A more salient observation can be found in a book by Francis Grose, "A Classical Description of the Vulgar Tongue", pre-dating the Civil War and published in 1796. It talks of nightingales. No, not the birds, but soldiers who dishonoured themselves by crying out when punishment was administered. That punishment usually came in the form of lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails. To help them preserve their honour they were given a bullet to bite on. Great, they died of lead poisoning but they preserved their honour.

There is an argument that biting the bullet was also meant to mean being brave or showing a bit of stiff upper lip. The following appeared in Rudyard Kipling's "The Light That Failed" (1891);
"'Steady, Dickie, steady!' said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip tightened. 'Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid'."