So, at one point, earlier in life, I used this frequently…usually, either the morning after consuming one too many adult beverage’s the night before , or perhap’s at the end of a particularly long work day.
“Deader than a Door Nail”
While looking, this morning, for something to post in the ‘What Has Made You Smile Today’ thread, I found the following video, which explain’s that there’s actual history/meaning behind this Idiom, with supposed English root’s!
*An Idiom is defined as: an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but that has a separate meaning of its own.
It’s very possible that this type of thread has been done here on the forum already, but if so, I couldn’t find it…so, let’s hear your favorite, or frequently used saying. Doesn’t have to be funny…just ‘let it rip’…hehe, see what I did there… That’s an Idiom, too!
Without further ado: I give you the back story of ‘deader than a door nail’
EXPLANATION: When someone sneezes in the United States, more often than not someone else says “Bless you!” The phrase first originated as “God bless you.”
PROPER RESPONSE: “Thank you!”
Below are just a few of the multiple possibilities for its origins] and no one is exactly sure of the right answer.
ORIGIN 1. People used to believe a sneeze caused someone to expel their soul out of their body, and so “God bless you” or “Bless you” was used as a protection against the devil snatching your soul.
OR
ORIGIN 2. During the Middle Ages in 14th century Europe, the bubonic plague (also known as the Black Death) was widespread. Because it was usually a fatal disease, and people were often very religious, the phrase “God Bless You” offered a benediction to someone who might no longer be living soon.
REASON #1. Nowadays, it is generally just meant to be the polite thing to say, which is probably the main reason why this practice persists.
SIDE NOTE: In place of “Bless you,” some Americans also say “Gesundheit,” the German word for “health.” The appearance of this phrase was due to the numerous German immigrants who moved to the United States. Many Americans do not even realize this is a German word (and usually are unaware of the true meaning).
This phrase supposedly dates back to a time when people were at risk of being buried alive. To keep from waking up inside a coffin (and then really dying), loved ones were buried with bell ropes so they could ring the bell if they woke up. Once someone heard them, they were dug up and thus “saved by the bell.”
Just as real were the devices themselves, several of which were patented in England and in the USA. These were known as ‘safety coffins’ and designs were registered in the 19th century and up to as late as 1955; for example:
The Improved Burial Case.
Patent No. 81,437 Franz Vester, Newark, New Jersey.
August 25, 1868.
As well as a handy bell, Vester’s device had the novel enhancement of a glass screen to view the coffin’s occupant. Presumably the mourners could wave to the deceased and, if he waved back, they knew they were on to something.
So…just as most everyone was dying to get INTO the coffin, there were a few just dying to get out?
Thank’s Rocky! Good one
This has me thinking, now…gonna have to look up ‘That Rings a Bell/ Does That Ring a Bell’…connected?
And gushing — somehow — from the land itself, there are springs of pure milk white as snow, and bright streams of it flowing through the hills, as if the milk of an eternally vibrant earth mother in her fruitful cycle of multiplication. It is, according to the Bible, “the beauty of all lands” — a paradise whose people would lack nothing.
This curious, supernatural image is evoked every year in the spring by celebrations of the Exodus, which for millennia have alluded to the “land flowing with milk and honey,” that divine destination of a people fleeing slavery: the Promised Land.
Questions about the particular significance of milk and honey involve literary archaeology, and such pursuit reveals the different layers of meaning these ancient fertility symbols gained as they were adopted and assimilated by different early cultures of the Middle East. What ultimately emerges is a startling image whose core is pantheistic and sexual, as well as both sacred and profane.
For us, “milk and honey” originates in the Hebrew Bible in God’s description of the country lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, namely, Canaan. It is first described as “a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” — and in this way alone — when God commissions Moses to lead the Israelites to it.
We generally accept the received definition of “milk and honey” as a metaphor meaning all good things — God’s blessings; and that the Promised Land must have been a land of extraordinary fertility. The phrase “flowing with milk and honey” is understood to be hyperbolically descriptive of the land’s richness; hence, its current use to express the abundance of pure means of enjoyment.
Tradition preserves the forbidden fruit of the bee’s labor
as a divine blessing, and maintains its enduring sacred nature.
Freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
Not what it appears to be lol
Back in the days of cannons, there was a square frame made from brass used to keep the cannonballs in a pyramid (it would also stop the cannonballs from rolling around on ships). When the weather turned cold the brass would contract and the balls would fall off the brass monkey.
A real howl for prank-calling kids of our 70’s past: get a naive auto parts clerk on the phone (dumb teen, etc.) and ask for "chrome muffler bearings”
Contrary to popular belief, muffler bearings do exist, just ask your local dodge stealth or mitsubisi gt3000 owner. Although a popular prank to pull on the not so automotive savy muffler bearings are located inside the muffler, in order to operate a flap which opens and closes depending on the exhaust flow directing flow back into the turbo. Due to inconvienience (carbon/other buildup often jammed the bearings causing noise and poor performance) the bearings are only found on older models.
This comes from the old tradition of giving visitors a warm meal. This was, and still is in many cases, the way to welcome visitors to a home.
In the old days, if you wanted to welcome someone to your home, you might prepare a large meal—a warm meal of roasted meat was quite common.
Visitors who were not welcome, or those who overstayed their welcome, in a house were given subpar food that was not warmed in order to hasten their leaving the home. As rumors go, unwelcome guests were often given a cold shoulder of mutton for dinner. There is not definite proof for this story, but it is the most often-cited origin story.
It seems this phrase comes from Scotland, as there are several written uses of it in Scottish texts dating as far back as the 1800s.
One famous example from Sir Walter Scott in 1824 includes the phrase,
I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally.
This peculiar phrase came from a crazily unsuccessful method of treating a rabid dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the wound. Well, that sounds like the worst idea ever, just as drinking the next day often is.
“to keep a joint in your mouth,” dangling from the lip like Humphrey Bogart’s cigarette in the old movies, instead of passing it on,
1969, first attested in “Easy Rider.”
, or perhap’s at the end of a particularly long work day. 
That’s an Idiom, too! 
