Something Different

[Elessar]

Get away from the disgust of politics for a while.

How many commonly used expressions do people know the origins of?

These have nautical backgrounds:

"Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey". In days of sail and on armed warships,
by the cannons were indented plates made of brass, called a Brass Monkey.
The cannon balls were stacked on the plates. When it got cold, the plate would
retract (shrink), and the cannon balls would topple off. Thus, "Freezing the Balls off A Brass Monkey."

"Let the Cat of the Bag". Again in days of sail, if a crewman was sentenced to receive
lashes as punishment, the Bos'un would make a Cat 'O Nine Tails' out of leather and
a wooden handle, then put in into a canvas bag. When time for the execution of
sentence, the Bos'un would "Let The Cat Out of The Bag" to issue the lashes.

A Myth: The signal S.O.S does not mean Save Our Ship! ...---... (S.O.S) is simply the easiest
method to send a recognized distress call in Morse Code, or flashing light. S.O.S was recognized Internationally.
I even heard that Morse Code over VHF-FM several times.

Do any other Vets have something to add to the list?

[High_Plains_Drifter]

I heard this one last night... watching some weird program, but it was about burying people that they thought were dead. Medicine back in the day was really iffy, and there was some affliction that was causing people to appear dead but they weren't, so they were buried alive. So up cropped several different means for people that were buried to notify someone above ground that they were still alive, and one method was being able to pull a string to ring a bell above ground... hence: SAVED BY THE BELL.

[Bilgerat]

There's a show called Lore. It showed the bell thing on the first segment