Lo and Behold! More Cliches? Quiz | Idioms and Proverbs

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. According to an old expression, when you have information from a source whose identity you don't wish to reveal, who do you say is the clandestine source of that information?

Answer: little bird

Suppose someone asks how you know he or she is going to receive an award. You might respond, "Let's just say a little bird told me". The expression is used as a light-hearted and polite way to say you don't wish to reveal your source of information, perhaps because the source wishes to remain anonymous or unnamed.

The origin of the phrase lies in the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes 10:20: "Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought: and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter" (KJV). Brian Melbancke's "Philotimus", published in 1583, makes use of a phrase similar to the contemporary one: "I had a little bird, that brought me newes of it".

2. Tabitha really wants to do something that she knows her family would not support. Renaldo wants to advise Tabitha that she should do what she wants to do, regardless of the consequences. He tells her, "Let the chips fall where they may". What is the source of this cliche?

Answer: Chopping wood with an axe

"Let the chips fall where they may" means "to disregard any consequences and speak one's mind or do what one thinks must be done". The idea for this expression was influenced by a fourteenth-century proverb: "Hew not too high lest the chips fall in thine eye". Obviously, the expression states the exact opposite message of the old proverb: one should pay attention to the hewing (the task at hand) and not worry about the chips at all. Roscoe Conkling, a late nineteenth-century U.S. Senator, spoke the following words about President Ulysses Grant in 1880: "He will hew to the line of the right, let the chips fall where they may".

3. To be "left in the lurch" is to be left far behind or to be abandoned, particularly in difficult or unfavorable circumstances. However, why does this expression mean this? More to the point, what is a "lurch"?

Answer: a French game similar to backgammon

The word "lurch" comes from the French "lourche", a sixteenth-century game believed to have been similar to backgammon. Eventually, the name of the game itself began to be used in a number of different games to refer to a player's situation when he or she was very much behind, so far behind, in fact, that losing was a foregone conclusion.

For example, in the game of cribbage, a player who has scored only thirty-one (in one variant of the game) when his or her opponent has scored sixty-one is said "to be in the lurch".

The figurative use of "in the lurch" to refer to someone who has been left in a difficult situation was in use at least as far back as 1576 when Gabriel Harvey wrote in his "Letter-Book", "Lest he fail in his reckning . . . and so leave himself in the lurch".

4. I told my father about George, a friend of mine who had a college degree but was still living at home with his parents, who owned a large house with several rooms, an outdoor pool, and several hundred acres for riding horses. George was not working any job or starting any career, yet he had no expenses because his parents took care of all his wants and needs. My father, of course, had something to say about George and his situation. Relying on an expression whose roots lie in vaudeville, what did my father say that George was living?

Answer: the life of Reilly

The "life of Reilly" is the "good life", an easy life of living luxuriously without having to work. The expression comes from a song that the Irish-American vaudevillian performer Pat Rooney made popular in the 1880s. Interestingly, "Reilly" was originally "O'Reilly", and the title of the song was "Are You the O'Reilly?". Each verse of the song would demonstrate a different aspect of O'Reilly's good life.

Then, at the end of each verse Rooney would encourage the audience to sing the following chorus along with him: "Are you the O'Reilly who keeps this hotel? / Are you the O'Reilly they speak of so well? / Are you the O'Reilly they speak of so highly? / Gor blime me, O'Reilly, you are looking well!" In early twentieth-century America, the expression "life of Reilly" was frequently in use, and by 1919 it had become very popular thanks to another song, "My Name Is Kelly", by an American named Howard Pease, who achieved reknown as a writer primarily of children's literature.

The line mentioning the expression is "Faith and my name is Kelly, Michael Kelly, but I'm living the life of Reilly just the same".

5. If you had sat down at a restaurant and ordered a meal but you did not like the taste of anything the chef had prepared for you to eat, then you might say, "Cooking is not his" what?

Answer: long suit

A "long suit" is a particular skill for which someone has a talent or it is someone's specialty. It can also refer to something for which an individual has strong resources. The origin of the expression is card games such as bridge or whist that rely on winning hands by having a large number of cards in one suit.

In the game of bridge, for example, a player holding five or more cards in one suit, perhaps spades, would refer to spades as his or her long suit. The suit of spades would become an even stronger resource if it happened to be trump.

The transfer of this expression--"long suit"-- to other things was made toward the beginning of the twentieth century, as indicated by Andy Adams in "The Log of a Cowboy" in 1903: "Young Pete . . . assured our foreman that the building of bridges was his long suit".

6. Occasionally, you still hear someone who will remark, "Let slip the dogs of war". The expression means "to show no more restraint, the moral kind as well as the physical, and leap into action during a situation that has become a crisis". William Shakespeare created this expression, which eventually was used often enough to become a cliche. However, do you know from which of Shakespeare's plays this expression first occurred?

Answer: Julius Caesar

In Act 3, Scene 1, of "Julius Caesar", Antony is lamenting the assassination of Caesar and planning action against the conspirators. He at one point says the following: "And Caesar's spirit ranging for revenge, / With Ate by his side come hot from hell, / Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice / Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; / That this foul deed shall smell above the earth, / With carrion men, groaning for burial".

The source used by William Shakespeare for information needed for his play was "The Life of Marcus Brutus" from Plutarch's "Lives".

There he would have found a section discussing the idea of dogs trained for war. The "let slip" refers to releasing the dogs from their leashes. Many times, speakers or writers of this expression will include the "Cry 'Havoc'" at the beginning of the line. "Havoc" is what a military leader from the past would have called out when he wished to command his troops to give no mercy and to rape, pillage, burn, and do whatever other violent act his troops could conceive of doing.

This aspect certainly adds to the idea suggested by the expression that no more restraint should be practiced.

7. My wife and I were visiting Mr. and Mrs. Trundlebuss, our neighbors, and while our children were playing in the next room, our conversation turned toward a serious matter concerning another set of neighbors who lived on the same street as we. At this point, Mrs. Trundlebuss stood up to close the door to the room while saying, "Little pitchers have big ears". What in the world did she mean by this?

Answer: Children hear and understand more than we think they do.

"Little pitchers have big ears" is an idiom spoken by adults to warn other adults that they should be careful about what they are saying around children who may be listening. The metaphor or analogy between little pitchers and children relies on a pun.

The handle of a literal pitcher, the kind for pouring water or some other liquid, was often referred to as an "ear" because the looping form of the handle resembled, to some people, the shape of the lobe of an ear. The expression existed at least as far back as 1546 when John Heywood wrote, "Auoyd your children, smal pitchers haue wide eares" [sic].

8. According to an expression, the origin of which is found in the Bible, what "shouldn't" or "doesn't know what the right hand is doing"?

Answer: the left hand

Jesus explains in the Sermon on the Mount as it is presented in Matthew 6:3:, "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth" (KJV). The original meaning of Jesus's words is that when one gives or performs a charitable act, one should not do this for public praise or for increasing one's opinion of oneself.

In other words, one should approach the act of giving as if one were keeping it a secret from others as well as oneself. Perform charity as an altruistic act, not as a selfish one. Eventually, the Biblical expression evolved into one with slightly different words but one with a significantly different meaning: "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing".

When stated this way, the speaker means that an organization has grown so large that different departments or sections of that organization are failing to communicate with one another and are no longer aware of what any of the other sections are doing. Perhaps, different departments are redundantly performing similar duties, working at cross purposes, or behaving inappropriately because of a lack of supervision.

The expression can also mean that one is highly compartmentalized in one's actions. In other words, a person keeps one's interests separated; one interest has no effect or influence on the other.

9. This next bit of information is straight from the horse's mouth. Which of the following descriptions is meant to imply that someone is old or aging?

Answer: long in the tooth

The cliched expression is related to the cliched maxim "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" as well as the cliched phrase "from the horse's mouth". As a horse gets older, its gums retract, making its teeth look longer. The longer the teeth, the older the horse. Applying this description to people instead of horses, however, is relatively new. One of the earliest recordings of the expression occurred in 1919 when J. C. Snaith wrote in "Love Lane", "One of the youngest R.A.'s on record, but a bit long in the tooth for the army".

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" relies on the same principle of judging a horse's age by its teeth. If someone gives you a horse for free, be thankful rather than critical and don't be concerned with its age. On the other hand, if you were buying a horse and wanted to know the truth about the quality of the animal, you would want to get your proof "straight from the horse's mouth". Thus, the English language has at least three idiomatic expressions arising from one single practice.

Some do argue that "from the horse's mouth" comes from betting on race horses as a tongue-in-cheek expression. Those who bet on horse races are often looking for credible sources of information about the health, stamina, and superior or inferior qualities of the horses as well as the likelihood of horses' winning and placing and so on. While one source may claim he or she got information from a trainer or a jockey or a stable hand, another source might claim, "Well, I got my information straight from the horse's mouth," suggesting that his or her information is the most accurate because, after all, there is no one who knows more about the horses than the horses themselves, right?

10. To receive the "lion's share" of a particular allotment of something means that you have the greater part of that allotment. Who is given the credit for having coined this phrase?

Answer: Aesop

In one of Aesop's fables, a lion, a heifer, a goat, and a sheep go hunting, and at the outset of their excursion, the four agree to share the catch equally. They eventually catch and kill a stag, and the lion divides the prey into four parts. However, then the story takes a turn. Aesop (or the writer credited with that name) writes, "Taking the best piece for himself, he [the lion] said, 'This is mine of course, as I am the Lion'; taking another portion, he added, 'This too is mine by right--the right, if you must know, of the strongest.' Further, putting aside the third piece, 'That's for the most valiant,' said he; 'and as for the remaining part, touch it if you dare.'"

Source: Author alaspooryoric

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Lo and Behold! More Cliches? Trivia Quiz

At long last, here is a quiz you can lick your chops over! All of the questions are concerned with clichés and idioms with a key word beginning with "L". Lay on, Macduff, but don't lay an egg!

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