language

The answer
First gentleman (or first husband), though he would still be addressed as Mr. President.

Verdict right

The answer
It first appeared in print in 1828, well before the guessed dates.

Verdict wrong

The answer
Sheets are the ropes that control a sail; if they are left untied the sail flaps freely in the wind, like a drunk sailor who forgot to secure it. An early example of "a sheet in the wind" dates to an 1824 novel.

Verdict partly

The answer
No single meaning is established. The bridge dates to a Roman timber bridge in 55 AD, with medieval London Bridge begun in 1176. Theories include the Great Fire of 1666, a Viking attack, and child sacrifice (with no archaeological evidence). The 1831 bridge was replaced in 1972 and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Verdict partly

The answer
From "umble pie", a pie of deer innards (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys), from French "nomble". The H crept in as the phrase was reinterpreted as "humble", so the two words are etymologically unrelated.

Verdict partly

The answer
Pliny the Elder (citing Cicero) described a copy of Homer's Iliad written so small it fit inside a walnut shell. Shakespeare later used it in Hamlet (c. 1602). It is a walnut.

Verdict partly

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In ancient Greece and Rome it represented the phallus (the Greeks called it "catapygon"), with the neighboring fingers standing for the testicles. In the US it dates to the 1890s, possibly via Italian immigrants. "The bird" comes from the 1860s expression "give the big bird", meaning to hiss like a goose.

Verdict right

The answer
Scandinavia is commonly used for Denmark, Norway and Sweden; "Nordic" unambiguously covers those plus Finland and Iceland and their territories.

Verdict partly

The answer
They are different plants. True yams (genus Dioscorea) are native to Africa, starchy, dry, white-fleshed and bark-skinned, while sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family. Most US "yams" are soft sweet potatoes; the mix-up goes back to the African word "nyami".

Verdict partly

The answer
From the hopper of a grain mill, first recorded in English in 1277, and later any device that sorts grain from chaff or gold from mud.

Verdict partly

The answer
It's American, from the 1840 presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison ("Tippecanoe and Tyler too"), when supporters rolled a giant campaign ball across the country. It replaced the earlier British phrase "keep the ball up", which suggested juggling.

Verdict partly

The answer
The kissing custom is English, where a berry was picked before each kiss. The romantic overtones are linked to Druids, the Greek festival of Saturnalia, and a Norse myth in which Loki killed Baldur with a mistletoe arrow. The word comes from German "mistel" (dung) and "tan" (twig), because the plant spreads through bird droppings.

Verdict right

The answer
A Scots poem by Robert Burns from 1788, set to a traditional tune. The title translates to "long long ago" or "old times", and the poem asks whether old acquaintances should be forgotten. It is sung to bid farewell to the old year and at funerals.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Fell" is old English for cruel or terrible, and "swoop" is the sudden attack of a bird of prey. It appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when Macduff learns his family was killed "at one fell swoop".

Verdict right

The answer
The romantic sense is first recorded in an 1884 journal and may be a variation on "mash". It was American slang around 1914 and was popularized by the Gershwins' 1920s song "I've Got a Crush on You". An older meaning of "crush" was a social gathering.

Verdict partly

The answer
There is no consensus. Theories include "fuss" (cops being fussy over trifles, recorded in 1931 slang), early officers' beards, and the sound of field radios. "Pigs" is a derogatory term dating to the 16th century, and "cop" is probably short for "copper".

Verdict partly

The answer
"Juke" in juke joint comes from Gullah (a West African-derived language), meaning disorderly or wicked. The sports sense of a feint is a separate word, a variant of "duck" first recorded around 1510, so the two are unrelated.

Verdict wrong

The answer
From French "piquenique", first recorded in 1692 and likely from "piquer" (to pick) and "nique" (a trifle). It entered English in 1748 via Lord Chesterfield. A popular folk etymology, "pick a niche", is debated.

Verdict right

The answer
From the French "allez-oop", a circus acrobat's cry. It was first used in the 1950s by the San Francisco 49ers for a high arcing pass, and was popularized in basketball by NC State's David Thompson in the early 1970s, with the Tucker brothers at Oklahoma Baptist credited with using it in the mid-1960s.

Verdict partly

The answer
A bandwagon was a literal wagon carrying a circus or parade band. Circus clown Dan Rice used his bandwagon to gain attention for his political campaign in 1848, and the figurative phrase is attested in a 1899 Theodore Roosevelt letter. P.T. Barnum is often cited but didn't coin it.

Verdict partly

The answer
The earliest record is in a 1512 German book, Thomas Murner's "Narrenbeschwörung", which includes a woodcut of a woman tossing out a bathtub with the baby in it. It was originally a German saying.

Verdict partly

The answer
No firm origin was found. A popular story about selling urine to tanneries is dubious, and the Oxford English Dictionary calls the phrase chiefly American, with a first citation from a 1934 typescript of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. One source dates it to about 1905.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
The first documented use is in a 1760 London Magazine review. Leading theories are the Royal Navy's cat o' nine tails kept in a bag, or livestock fraud at market, where a cat was swapped for a pig in a bag (cf. "pig in a poke"). Neither is certain.

Verdict wrong

The answer
Probably nautical: a seasick sailor was sent below deck, away from the weather (the "weather bow", the side bad weather blows from). The opposite is "ship-shape".

Verdict partly

The answer
It means children overhear more than adults realize. It compares the ear-like handles on a small pitcher to children's ears, and appears in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection and later in Shakespeare's Richard III.

Verdict partly

The answer
Not settled. Theories include the cat o' nine tails silencing victims, ancient Egyptians feeding liars' tongues to cats, and a witch's cat stealing tongues. It first appears in print in an 1881 magazine.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
From opium pipes, via the English literati of the 18th and 19th centuries; it appears in US newspapers in the 1890s.

Verdict right

The answer
It originally referred to treating a rabid dog bite by putting hair from the dog in the wound. The earliest known hangover reference is in ancient Ugarit (mid-to-late second millennium BC), and the first English drinking reference is in John Heywood's 1546 text. Many cultures have a version.

Verdict partly

The answer
Kid gloves are made from the skin of young goats, which is very soft. Mentions go back to 1730s England, where the term was a slight implying daintiness. The figurative use appeared in America, with early print examples in an 1849 magazine and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

Verdict right

The answer
From Pliny the Elder's translation of an ancient antidote for poison, to be "taken fasting plus a grain of salt" (Pompey is said to have used it). The figurative meaning became widespread in the 17th century. The idea that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is baseless.

Verdict partly

The answer
Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery describes the "Grapevine Telegraph" slaves used to share news. The New York Public Library points to the Grapevine Tavern in Greenwich Village during the Civil War, and some say telegraph wires looked like trained grapevines. Australia's "bush telegraph" followed.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Soda jerk" is from the motion of pulling the fountain's draft arm (about 1915, popular in the 20s-30s). "Jerk" for a sharp twist is recorded in the 1570s, from a stroke of a whip, and the insult may come from the railroad term "jerk-water town".

Verdict partly

The answer
No origin was found. The medical term is xerostomia, and the term probably circulated informally until it was written down, possibly in the 1960s.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
From late 1800s horse racing, when a wire was strung across the track above the finish line to help judges determine which horse crossed first. A wire was also used at the start line, and "wire to wire" means leading from start to finish.

Verdict right

The answer
A kosher dill pickle is not necessarily kosher in the dietary-law sense; the term refers to the traditional style of Jewish New York City pickle makers, using garlic and dill.

Verdict partly

The answer
From a conversation attributed to St. Ambrose (about 340-397), the bishop of Milan, who told St. Augustine that in Milan he did not fast on Saturdays, but in Rome he did. Augustine recorded it, giving a date of about 387.

Verdict partly

The answer
It's not an F but the "long s" (ſ), a separate character without a full crossbar, used at the start or middle of words (never the end). It fell out of use around 1780, and it survives as the integral symbol in calculus.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Cooties" is thought to come from Malay/Austronesian "kutu" (a biting parasite). British soldiers used it for lice in the trenches of World War I, and usage spiked around 1920. By the mid-20th century North American kids used it for an imaginary germ, and the "shot" likely echoes polio vaccination.

Verdict right

The answer
It became nationally popular in the 1840 election as a slogan for "Old Kinderhook", Martin Van Buren's nickname (he was from Kinderhook, New York). It began as a joking abbreviation of "all correct" in an 1839 Boston newspaper, during a fad for abbreviations. Other etymologies are debated.

Verdict right

The answer
The Dutch phrase "in de pekel zitten" (sitting in the pickle) meant to be drunk in the 16th century. It was first used in English by Shakespeare in The Tempest (1611), and later came to mean a difficult situation.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Druthers" is a late-19th-century American contraction of "would rather" ("I'd rather" to "druther"). One of the first known uses in print is by Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer.

Verdict right

The answer
The origin is unknown. Theories include stage fright before the orchestra pit, soldiers being drummed out of the army, and peasants singing critical songs from church West Galleries. The earliest print citation found is an 1834 New Hampshire newspaper.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
Mostly marketing. Everyone slept in twin or double beds until the 1940s, and bigger sizes (queen, king, California King) were introduced between about 1941 and 1965 in the consumer boom. The word "mattress" comes from the Arabic "matrah", and spring mattresses were patented in 1865.

Verdict partly

The answer
The most widespread story involves sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels and his wife Alma, 24 years his junior, around 1908. The earliest recorded use is 1923, when "sugar" was slang for money, and a candy called Papa Sucker renamed itself "Sugar Daddy".

Verdict right

The answer
No definitive origin was found. One source says it came from teens at a drugstore soda fountain (a "pop stand") in the 1950s; the popsicle itself was invented in 1924.

Verdict partly

The answer
From Latin "cornu" (horn) and "copia" (plenty). In Greek legend, Zeus's goat foster mother Amalthea broke off a horn, and he promised it would always bring her what she wanted. The first English dictionary entry was in 1508. How it became tied to Thanksgiving wasn't found.

Verdict partly

The answer
A Commonwealth bank holiday on December 26. The OED's earliest uses (1830s) define it as the day postmen, errand boys and servants expected to receive a "Christmas box" (a tip), since servants had worked on Christmas. It is also St. Stephen's Day.

Verdict partly

The answer
They are two different words. The armored glove comes from the Old French "gantelet". "Gauntlet" in "run the gauntlet" comes from the Swedish "gatlopp" ("gata" lane + "lopp" course), a military punishment where an offender ran between two rows of men with switches (recorded 1670-1680). English merged the spellings.

Verdict partly

The answer
The meaning was right but the timing was early: it is an American phrase, one of several "dollars to..." forms (dollars to buttons, 1884), with an 1876 Nevada newspaper citation. Donuts trace to Dutch settlers' oil cakes.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Bowl" comes from the Rose Bowl, the first post-season college football game, and the Yale Bowl's bowl-shaped stadium design. "Super Bowl" came from Lamar Hunt, whose daughter played with a toy called the Super Ball.

Verdict right

The answer
Both are in the mustard family (Brassicaceae) but are different species. Horseradish is probably native to southeastern Europe or western Asia, and the English word dates to the 1590s, with "horse" meaning strong or coarse. One theory is a mix-up with the German "meerrettich" (sea radish).

Verdict partly

The answer
The most accepted etymology is that wartime pilots dreamed of buying a farm after the war, and when one was killed, the insurance payout or military pension allowed his family to pay it off.

Verdict right

The answer
Theories include someone standing on a bucket to hang themselves, and an older meaning of "bucket" as a wooden beam in a barn roof where slaughtered animals were hung, with the animal kicking it.

Verdict partly

The answer
It's a loanword from Hindi, "panch" (five), for a drink with five ingredients (spirit, sugar, lemon, water or tea, and spices), brought from India to England in the early 17th century. It is first recorded in 1632, with Jamaican rum entering around 1655. A second theory ties it to a barrel size.

Verdict wrong

The answer
From examining a horse's teeth to judge its age and condition; the earliest print example found is from 1913 in horse racing, where the most trusted information came from the trainers. A related phrase, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", goes back to St. Jerome around AD 400.

Verdict right

The answer
From the Venetian "quarantina" (40 days), used in the 14th-15th centuries when ships arriving in port during the plague had to isolate for 30-40 days. The word itself is French, but the idea of isolating the sick is far older.

Verdict partly

The answer
Dates to 16th-century England, where spirits were taxed by a burn test (alcohol that ignited was "over proof"). In 1816 England defined 100 proof by specific gravity (about 57% ABV), and the US simplified it to exactly twice the ABV. "Proof" comes from the Latin "probare" (to test), and bread proofing shares that root.

Verdict partly

The answer
"Haywire" refers to the soft, springy wire used to bind hay bales, which tangles easily; it was used in 1900s New England lumber camps for slapdash "haywire outfits" (first appearing about 1902). "On the fritz" is of unknown origin, first appearing before 1914 (before "Fritz" meant a German soldier), possibly from the Hans and Fritz comic strip (1897). "Jerry-rigged" comes from the nautical "jury-rig", not Germans.

Verdict partly

The answer
From Punch, the puppet in Punch and Judy shows, who was always delighted with himself after committing violent acts ("That's the way to do it!"). The first recorded appearance in England was in 1662, and the character derives from the Italian Pulcinella.

Verdict wrong

The answer
The seven-day planetary week comes from the Babylonians and the Hellenistic Greeks, and the Romans replaced their eight-day cycle with it by about AD 60. Saturday, Sunday and Monday honor Saturn, the Sun and the Moon; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday honor the Germanic gods Tiw, Woden, Thor and Frigg/Freya. Tuesday's Tiw corresponds to the Roman god of war, Mars.

Verdict right

The answer
The ultimate origin is unclear. It was innocuous until the 18th century and then considered unprintable, possibly from a mistaken belief that it was blasphemous (the blood of Christ, or "by our lady"). The OED likes a theory that it arose from aristocratic rowdies called "bloods". The Bloody Mary cocktail is unrelated to the queen.

Verdict partly

The answer
Greek mythology; the origin of "kentauros" is obscure, with one theory that it meant "bull killer", from Thessalian horsemen who hunted bulls on horseback. A common theory is that cultures without horses saw mounted nomads as one creature. The Minotaur means "bull of Minos".

Verdict partly

The answer
Possibly from horse racing: a goat was placed in a nervous racehorse's stall to calm it, and opponents would steal the goat to upset it. The first print appearances are early 1900s (one in 1904), and there's no concrete evidence; otherwise the origin is unknown.

Verdict partly

The answer
From "soup" as slang for any substance injected into a racehorse to change its speed or temperament (Webster's 1911), including drugs and even nitroglycerin. It predates superchargers and was later applied to cars.

Verdict wrong

The answer
Cracker cows are real (Florida cracker cattle, a small breed from Spanish stock). The word "cracker" for poor frontier whites likely comes from "whip cracker" (cattle drivers), and it existed even in Shakespeare's time as a word for a boaster. In the 1940s it became an epithet for bigoted whites.

Verdict right

The answer
From the straight line a honeybee takes when returning to its hive. It appears in early 19th-century print (one example from 1808), and "bee lining" was used to locate wild bee colonies by trigonometry.

Verdict right

The answer
It was preceded by Pepsi's 1950 slogan "more bounce to the ounce" and was used by Defense Secretary Charles Wilson in 1954 for Eisenhower's "New Look" policy, with a 1940 ad as the earliest print citation. "Buck" for dollar goes back to deerskin trading (a 1748 reference), with a possible link to the "sawbuck" $10 bill.

Verdict right

The answer
Red tape was used under Charles V of Spain in the 16th century to bind important administrative dossiers, and legal documents were tied with it in England from the 17th century. Dickens used it in David Copperfield, and the first figurative use meaning bureaucracy is 1796. The word "tape" is older than adhesive tape and meant a narrow strip of cloth.

Verdict partly

The answer
From the rubber-soled shoes plain-clothes detectives wore so they could move stealthily. "Gumshoe" means detective from about 1906-08, and as a verb it means to sneak around. "Dick" (detective) comes from the Romany "dik", to see.

Verdict partly

The answer
It began in the 1940s as a name for aerial bombs capable of destroying a city block. The first known use for a film was in 1943 (Time magazine and Variety ads), and the "blockbuster era" is dated to 1975's Jaws. An alternate theory involves studio "block booking".

Verdict partly

The answer
It's spelled "shoo-in" ("shoe-in" is a misspelling). It comes from horse racing, where a corrupt jockey would shoo a preselected winner across the finish line. Around 1900 the verb phrase "shoo in" was used in racing, and the earliest noun use found is 1937.

Verdict wrong

The answer
It has nothing to do with eggs. The verb is from the Old Norse "eggja", to incite, related to "edge" (the sharp edge of a sword), and has been in English since about 1200.

Verdict wrong

The answer
The popular story that it comes from a legal limit on the thickness of a stick for beating a wife is a false etymology. The earliest print uses are 17th-century (a Scottish preacher, 1692), meaning a rough practical measure.

Verdict right

The answer
A spirit of the hearth in folklore, once helpful but later considered mischievous after Christianity spread. Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream is called a hobgoblin, and the word can mean an imagined source of fear.

Verdict partly

The answer
Several sources: a ship's wheelhouse (the pilot house where the wheel is, or the housing around a paddlewheel), and baseball, where the batter's power zone is the "wheelhouse". Mark Twain used the term.

Verdict right

The answer
Cyrillic is derived from the Greek alphabet. The earliest forms are from about 893, when Bulgaria's Tsar Simeon the Great commissioned a new script at the Preslav Literary School to replace the Glagolitic script of Saints Cyril and Methodius. It became the EU's third official script (after Latin and Greek) with Bulgaria's accession in 2007.

Verdict partly

The answer
They are different animals and not closely related. True buffalo (Cape and water buffalo) are native to Africa and Asia, while bison are native to North America; early European explorers mislabeled American bison as "buffalo". Britannica distinguishes them by the three H's: home, hump and horn.

Verdict wrong

The answer
The etymology is unknown. Theories include Norse mythology (dogs and wolves symbolized wind and storms), the Greek "katadoupe" (waterfall) or "kata doxa" (contrary to belief), and a false thatched-roof theory. Similar phrases appear in the 1650s ("dogs and polecats") and Jonathan Swift used it in 1738.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
It originally meant the pupil, the central aperture of the eye. It appears in Old English in 885 (King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care), in Shakespeare and in the 1611 King James Bible, which translated a Hebrew phrase meaning "little man of the eye". Apples themselves originated in Kazakhstan.

Verdict right

The answer
From the custom of marking bar tabs and scores on a slate in pubs. It is attested in 1597 ("all my debts stand chalked up on the post for liquor"), and it came to mean to attribute something to a cause.

Verdict right

The answer
"Cravat" is a catch-all word for neckwear that derives from the French "Croate" (Croatian mercenaries in the Thirty Years' War) and is the forerunner of the necktie, from the 17th century. An ascot is a wider, more informal cravat named after the Royal Ascot horse races, originally silk bundled and held by a pin.

Verdict partly

The answer
Smoked and cured herring turns red and smells pungent. The figurative meaning appears in a 1686 gentleman's magazine, which suggested dragging a red herring across a fox's trail to confuse hounds, and a 1697 horsemanship tract suggested dragging a cat or fox carcass to train horses.

Verdict right

The answer
The first historical reference is from British historian James Howell in 1659 ("no weeping for shed milk"), and Jonathan Swift used it in 1738. It is likely European folklore, with a story that spilled milk was an extra offering for fairies.

Verdict partly

The answer
No firm origin. A tailoring origin seems plausible ("work cut out for you" dates to 1551), and an 1859 book uses "stick a pin in it" figuratively to mean setting something aside to return to later.

Verdict right

The answer
The origin is unknown. The word appears for a hut in Walt Whitman in 1862 and a vehicle in Mark Twain in 1872, with "entire shebang" in print in 1872. It might come from the Irish "shebeen" (an unlicensed tavern), but Merriam-Webster calls it a puzzle with no verifiable link.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
The origin is unknown. Theories include 86 Bedford Street (a Prohibition-era bar with a crooked cop), the dimensions of a grave (8 feet by 6 feet), Article 86 of the military code (AWOL), the F-86 jet, rhyming slang for "nix", and 86-proof liquor.

Verdict unresolved

The answer
It was World War I US slang for a soldier who had lost all four limbs and could not move independently, with the first print use found in 1919 (a Surgeon General denying such cases existed). After WWII it came to mean a powerless person, then a failing organization, and by the 1950s a person unable to cope emotionally.

Verdict partly

The answer
The earliest use is from the literal upper crust of bread, in John Russell's Book of Nurture (around 1460). It was also used for the earth's crust and for a person's head or hat, and it came to refer to the aristocracy in the 19th century (1823).

Verdict partly

The answer
From British poet John Gay's 1732 poem "A New Song of New Similes" ("cool as a cucumber could see the rest of womankind"). The cucumber itself originates from South Asia.

Verdict partly

The answer
It's a variant of "down the drain" (the British equivalent is "down the pan"). The earliest citation found is from a 1954 US sports report (the Charleston Daily Mail), and no clear mechanism is known.

Verdict right

The answer
No definitive origin. The earliest known reference is an 1889 issue of The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), long before Stephen King's The Stand (1978). Candidates include duckpin bowling, tin ducks in a shooting gallery, ducklings following their mother, and the pool term "duck" for an easy shot.

Verdict partly

The answer
From the dice game craps (which may come from an Arabic game or Roman knucklebones). "Crapshoot" is a newer word: the earliest examples are from the 1960s and it wasn't widely used until the 1980s.

Verdict right

The answer
It is American and was in use before the 1850s, traced to New York City's criminal community. "Dead" means absolutely or certain, and "to rights" means in a proper manner; "bang to rights" is a British form.

Verdict partly

The answer
It is chiefly American and has been used since the mid-1900s, with a 1955 newspaper column as an early example. Urban Dictionary suggests it was slang from the 1920s with an unknown origin.

Verdict wrong

The answer
Often attributed to Stephen Crane's 1896 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, with earlier uses in Fritz Reuter's 1862 German novel (about a shoemaker) and possibly Ben Jonson's 1605 Volpone. The Italian "to be cold in the feet" meant to have no money, and the physiology of adrenaline is a plausible basis.

Verdict right

The answer
From the Latin "alea iacta est" ("the dice have been thrown"), said by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC. "Die" is a single die, and the phrase entered English in the early 1600s.

Verdict wrong

The answer
From the music trade magazine Cashbox, which put a red bullet next to chart positions of songs making sharp upward movement in the 1960s-70s (Billboard also used it). It came to mean rapidly rising or the best.

Verdict right

The answer
A "bumper" was a large wine cup filled to the brim in the 1600s, and by the 1700s it meant a large amount of anything. "Bumper crop" appears around 1830 (a 1836 Scottish newspaper item about grouse), and the car bumper dates to 1839 railway cars.

Verdict wrong

The answer
It is recent. The earliest known written use is from 1980-82 in British politics (a Times of London article), where "under a bus" was already a metaphor for a conveniently timed accident. It has also been attributed to minor-league baseball, Cyndi Lauper (1984) and used-car salesmen, but the origin is uncertain.

Verdict wrong

The answer
It appeared in the western US around 1890, and no one is certain of the origin. Guesses include "homeward bound", the railroad greeting "Ho, boy", "hoe boy" (a farmhand), and "homeless boy". A hobo is a migrant worker, distinct from a tramp (avoids work) or a bum (neither travels nor works), and hobos had an ethical code and a symbol language.

Verdict partly

The answer
"10-4" is one of the 10-codes created by the Illinois State Police's communications director Charles Hopper between 1937 and 1940 for police radio. "Roger" is from the WWII phonetic alphabet for R ("received"), which came from the Morse habit of replying with the letter R.

Verdict right

The answer
The first documented use is from a 1951 newspaper, and it likely comes from 1950s fishermen buying cans of live earthworms for bait, where the bait escaping became a bigger problem. It's an Americanized version of "opening Pandora's box".

Verdict partly

The answer
It was originally used mockingly for an impossible act: a late-1800s physics textbook asks why a man cannot lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps. It was sarcastic in the early 1900s (Booker T. Washington referenced it in 1895, Joyce in 1922), and the meaning later shifted to self-reliance. A Baron Munchausen story involves pulling oneself from a swamp by his hair.

Verdict right

The answer
From an 1858 cricket match in which bowler H. H. Stevenson took three consecutive wickets and fans collected money and presented him with a hat. It moved to hockey by 1909 (a Toronto businessman offered a hat to anyone scoring three goals).

Verdict partly

The answer
The earliest known use is in a 1977 book by Brian Glanville about the language of football, where the "nuts" are the testicles of a player through whose legs the ball is passed. Another theory is that unscrupulous exporters mixed wooden fake nutmegs into shipments.

Verdict right

The answer
"Jig" was Elizabethan slang for a trick or practical joke (16th-century, about 1590), so "the jig is up" means the trick has been exposed. The first documented use is 1777, and "gig is up" is a later variation.

Verdict right

The answer
"Toboggan" (a sled) is from the Canadian French "tabagane" from Algonquin (Mi'kmaq), recorded in 1829. The hat is short for "toboggan cap", worn while tobogganing; by 1929 the second word was dropped in the American South, where snow is rare.

Verdict right

The answer
It was popularized in the 1880s. A plausible theory is a line from an 1816 English melodrama, The Broken Sword, in which a character is corrected for repeating a tale about a cork tree ("a chestnut"), then quoted by a Boston comic actor, William Warren Jr. It originally means a stale, oft-repeated story.

Verdict partly

The answer
It is American, from around 1938, and refers to a speaker reading from notes jotted on his shirt cuff instead of memorizing, with detachable paper cuffs in the 1800s. It is popularly associated with Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, where his character writes lyrics on his cuffs.

Verdict partly

The answer
It is named for Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord in Ireland, who was ostracized by the Irish Land League in 1880 (workers, businesses and the postman refused to deal with him). The Times used it in print that year. The practice of boycotts goes back to the 1790s free produce movement against slave-produced sugar.

Verdict wrong

The answer
From the Book of Daniel (chapter 5): at King Belshazzar's feast a disembodied hand writes on the palace wall, and Daniel interprets it as a sign of the fall of Babylon (about 540 BC).

Verdict partly

The answer
It is British, with the "by half" form used by Sheridan in The School for Scandal (1780, "too moral by half"), and "too clever by half" is recorded by 1858. "By half" originally meant "half again as much".

Verdict partly

The answer
AM is Latin "ante meridiem" and PM is "post meridiem". The Egyptians divided the day into 24 parts in base 12 (sundial by day, water clock at night), and the Romans also used 12-hour divisions. The terms are first recorded in English in 1563.

Verdict right

The answer
In the 16th century a piece of spiced, scorched toast was commonly put in wine to soften bad flavor and stale bread. Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor has "put a toast in it", and drinking someone's health as a "toast" is recorded among 18th-century university students. Toastmasters appeared in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Verdict right

The answer
"Jungle" is not a scientific term: it comes from Hindi (from Sanskrit "jangala", dry or uncultivated land), recorded in English in 1776, and was a colloquial term for tropical forests with very dense tangled undergrowth. Scientists call them tropical forests or rainforests.

Verdict partly

The answer
It first appears in the early 1980s in magazines and newspapers, derived from earlier phrases like "whatever suits you" (1820s) and 1970s variants like "whatever turns you on", with a sexual connotation.

Verdict right

The answer
Dogs were considered an undesirable animal in 17th-century England and many phrases used them negatively ("dog tired", "dirty dog"). "Sick as a dog" refers to vomiting, with the earliest literary use in 1705 (some find 1592).

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It alludes to a tether, a rope tied to an animal to keep it from wandering, so at the end of its tether it has run out of options. It has been used since the late 1600s, and "at the end of one's tether" is the primarily British version.

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It has nothing to do with pigs. In the mid 16th century carrying goods on your back was called "pick pack" ("pick" can mean pitch), which became "pickaback" and then "piggyback" by folk etymology; "piggyback" appears in 1837 in a Devonshire dialect text and was used in the US by the 1800s.

Verdict wrong

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Derived from the early 17th-century interjection "pew" (OED: contempt, disgust), also spelled "peugh" or "pyoo". Possible roots are Latin "putrere" (to rot) or "pus", and the letters PU have been associated with stench since ancient Rome. Most languages have a similar interjection.

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From the 18th-century children's story "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes", about an orphan girl, Margery Meanwell, who owned only one shoe until a gentleman gave her a pair. "Goody" (goodwife) with "two shoes" appears even earlier (1670), and the negative sense was influenced by "goody-goody" in the 1870s.

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A craw is the crop, a bird's preliminary stomach, where grit and stones help grind food. Stones too big to pass would literally get stuck there. The earliest known citation is an 1878 book (Old Times in Tennessee).

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It's "bated breath", meaning held or reduced, short for "abated", and it appears in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "Baited" is a common misspelling, and "bated" is now used almost only in this phrase.

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The word is "deserts" (what one deserves, with one s) from Old French "deservir" (to serve well), and it is unrelated to the sweet course. It is recorded in the early 1500s (a Nicholas Udall translation of Erasmus), before "dessert" came into use.

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From 16th-century gambling: playing "above board" meant keeping your cards above the table ("board" meant table) so others could see them. The first known figurative use is 1599, and "boardroom" and "room and board" share the sense.

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It comes from baseball's spitball pitch (MLB banned it in 1911), though earlier uses exist: an 1794 Connecticut ad for a "spitball" for blacking shoes and 1830s kids' paper wads, which weren't used figuratively until the early 1900s.

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"Starboard" is from Old English "steorbord" (the side on which the ship was steered, since the steering oar was on the right). "Port" was the side facing the dock, where cargo was loaded, and it replaced "larboard" because that sounded too much like starboard. The Oxford English Dictionary cites "port" from 1543, and it was formalized in the 1800s (1867).

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There is no difference: they are the same animal (Marmota monax, a marmot). "Woodchuck" comes from the Algonquian word "wuchak" and has nothing to do with chucking wood. Groundhog Day was brought by German settlers in Pennsylvania, who used hedgehogs in Germany.

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They originated in radio dramas sponsored by soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble, starting in the early 1930s (Painted Dreams on WGN in 1930, Guiding Light in 1937). The term followed "horse opera" for low-budget westerns.

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It comes from carousels, where riders reaching out from the horses tried to grab a brass ring from an arm for a free ride. It means a very desirable prize, and has appeared in dictionaries since the late 19th century (and in Catcher in the Rye).

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It's "tenterhooks": hooks on a "tenter", a wooden frame used since the 14th century to stretch wet woolen cloth to dry. From the 18th century "on tenterhooks" meant in suspense, like cloth held stretched. "Tenter" is from Latin "tendere" (to stretch).

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The origin is unknown. It means being jumpy or ready to act, as in "if you're feeling froggy, jump", with mentions in mountain speech in North Carolina as early as 1955 and a possible tie to a Navy SEAL ballad.

Verdict unresolved

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It appeared in the early 19th century as a derogatory term for an effeminate man ("Molly" + "coddle"). "Coddle" came first, from the 1297 sense of boiling gently, as in a recipe.

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It is an American idiom, recorded in an 1889 Florida newspaper and in a 1837 magazine, and the Oxford English Dictionary calls it an African-American colloquialism of the mid-1800s. The rugby-scrum story is dubious, and "push comes to pull" has little evidence as an actual phrase.

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"Damn" (from Latin "damnare", to condemn) became an intensifier, and "damnedest" as a superlative is first recorded about 1828-1830 (some sources say 1596), with a colloquial American flavor.

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From the mid-17th century, a metaphor of cooking in which ingredients are altered and improved. An example appears in a 1636 letter from the Earl of Strafford ("the proof was once clear, however they have cooked it since"), and Smollett used it in 1751.

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The origin is unclear. Theories include medieval painted windows or walls that told stories ("historia"), the Old French "estoree" meaning something built (one built on top of another), and floors used for storing goods.

Verdict unresolved

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Loon the bird comes from a Scandinavian word and appeared in English in the 1600s; 'loon' meaning a fool is from Middle English 'loun'. 'Lunatic' is from Latin luna (moon), and 'loony' derives from lunatic, though Merriam-Webster says 'crazy as a loon' influenced it.

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Earliest known use is Scottish, 1719 (William Hamilton), then Robert Burns; leading theory is 'to the nine Muses', but the origin is murky and unconfirmed.

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From William of Orange's 17th-century vow to defend the Dutch Republic to the death, 'to die in the last ditch'; it caught on around 1900 as a phrase for a final attempt.

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Boxing: contestants literally threw hats into the ring to join the fight (London Morning Chronicle, 1804). Figurative use is attested in 1820, and Teddy Roosevelt made it a political phrase in 1912.

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Meaning is to flee quickly. Mid-19th-century American, popularized in the Civil War (c. 1861); earliest print is an 1860 Pennsylvania newspaper. True origin is unknown; theories include Scandinavian, Greek 'skedasis', and a dialect word for scatter.

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No clear reason. Earliest print is Seba Smith in 1840 and Mark Twain popularized it in 1889; it may descend from 'more ways to kill a dog than hanging' (1678). One theory is domestic cat fur as a cheap substitute for pine marten; it was also a playground gymnastics move.

Verdict wrong

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19th-century New York City slang, likely from the Dutch 'hoekje' (hide-and-seek, or a nook to hide in); it appears in a 1848 dictionary of Americanisms as schoolboy slang for playing truant.

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Recorded from the 1860s for a new military or police recruit, likely a shortening of 'recruit' (or from 'rook', to cheat); popularized by Kipling in 1892 and used in baseball by the early 1900s. Etymology is uncertain.

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A term for early-2010s lifestyle trends considered the opposite of trending, or trying too hard to be trendy; coined in 2013 by a high school student. Not related to 'bougie'.

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A minced oath, a euphemism for 'devil', used by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1600); it predates Charles Dickens.

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Soup is the first course and nuts the last; the Roman 'ab ovo usque ad mala' (eggs to apples) is a predecessor. The specific phrase 'soup to nuts' is American, from the early 1900s.

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A corruption of 'ragman roll', a Middle English word for a list or scroll, linked to the oaths of allegiance Edward I forced Scottish nobles to sign (1291). It resurfaced as 'rigmarole' in the 18th century.

Verdict wrong

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Literally a string of daisies with stems linked together; first known use as a noun is 1841 (Edward Bulwer-Lytton), and as a verb 1955. The meaning later extended to any interlinked sequence, including electronics and networks.

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First noun use is in the 1940s (1949 Washington Post), likely from 'crash program' or 'crash landing' in aviation and military training; the education sense appeared in the 1950s.

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An excuse to leave discreetly, often for a drink; earliest confirmed print is an 1866 play (Flying Scud, 'a man about a dog'). 'Piss like a racehorse' is much later (1982), though it may have revived the phrase.

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'Toe the line' is correct; 'tow' is a common misspelling. First print is from the British Army (1738 'The Army Regulator'), with other theories including the Royal Navy, bare-knuckle boxing and school.

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No one knows exactly. First published in 1589; Gemini cites the nautical equator-crossing ceremony; related 'red line' comes from a 1928 oil agreement, and the Alamo sword line story is a 19th-century myth.

Verdict partly

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A 'pale' is a stake or fence (Latin palus); it referred to the English-controlled area around Dublin, with the Irish beyond it. Figurative use goes back to the 1300s-1400s, and Shakespeare used it.

Verdict wrong

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Hinged table sections that fold down resemble leaves (drop leaf), and expandable tables date to around the 1500s; 'table leaf' is documented from the late 1600s (Thomas Mace).

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No definitive origin; first print is an 1853 St. Louis newspaper. 'Keep your eyes skinned' (Moby Dick) appears earlier; theories include peeling potato eyes and Robert Peel's police (1829), and 'peel' as literal stripping away of a layer.

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Ship toilets were at the bow (the 'head'), since the wind from the stern carried waste away; 'head' for the bow dates to 1485 and its use for the toilet is in print by 1708 (Woodes Rogers).

Verdict right

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Burlesque and vaudeville: comedians were billed as first, second and third bananas, and Phil Silvers credited Harry Steppe with introducing the term around 1927. 'Top banana' later became slang for any boss.

Verdict right