Sayings most people don't know the origins of.

BigSouth said:
I heard something totally different about “balls to the wall”. Same era, but related to the throttles on Navy vessels. 3 balls that rotate on a pendulum type setup. The farther you opened the throttles, these balls would begin to spin and extend out, almost make contact with the wall. Balls to the wall meant wide open throttle.
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that would be “Balls Out” refering the governor spining on a steam engine, the balls would move further out as speed increased
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Blkvoodoo said:
that would be “Balls Out” refering the governor spining on a steam engine, the balls would move further out as speed increased
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I remember that from some show that jay leno was on talking about his stream engines. Now everytime I hear someone say that something is running "balls out" I always think of leno.
 
Shittin in high cotton.

One of my favorites. Means you’re doing really well when the crop is tall and full enough you can squat a dumper in the field with out being seen. In other words it’s gonna be a fruitful harvest = $$
 
Hell in a hand basket.

Widely believed that it refers to the era where beheadings were common. It was believed that the head contained the soul of the individual. If you were sentenced to die by beheading, you were essentially condemned to hell for being a sinner. When the head was severed, it was typically caught in a hand basket so that it could be carried away.

However, popular iterations of guillotines weren't invented until the late 1700s during the French Revolution, and the phrase is referenced a century prior to that. Medievil churches with stained glass windows depict Satan carting sinners away in a wheelbarrow, but the phrase "hell in a wheelbarrow" doesn't sound as glamorous. Earliest writings can be traced back to 1618, "Oh, this oppressor [that is, one who was wealthy but gave little to the church] must needs go to heaven! What shall hinder him? But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him" (Thomas Adams).

Hell in a hand basket is more popular since it can be easier and more handily carried.

'Going to hell in a handbasket' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
 
a_kelley said:
"good Lord willing the creek don't rise"
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I thought it was "if the good Lord's willing AND the creek don't rise".


I said something was "the cats ass" the other day and nobody knew what i meant...

Another one nobody knew was "the devil is beating his wife" for when it's raining and the sun is shining at the same time.

I was also always intrigued by the origin of the word "shit". I had always heard the Ship High In Transit story from during the wooden ship days. They'd store bags of crap below deck to bring back as fertilizer, but it would get wet, ferment, and build up a lot of methane...or just stink worse. So they'd write S.H.I.T. on the bags.
 
Been a while...but I was talking to a lady in my old neighborhood when a rash of burglaries were going on. I said something to the effect of ‘5 finger discount’. She informed me I shouldn’t be so vulgar. We went back and forth, and finally I asked her what she thought that meant. She said ‘ya know, like sticky fingers’. I told her that those did mean the same thing...but not what she thought they meant. She was mid-50’s and turned beet red and told me that she always thought those two phrases referred to masturbation.
 
"Up the creek without a paddle."

Doesn't make any dam sense to me. Seems like it would be much worse to be DOWN the creek without a paddle.
 
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