Common Phrases: And Where They Come From

Clearly Pitts-Malone has been hitting the bottle. This was the most tedious read I've ever encountered on the porcelain God.

I was very disappointed in this book. Most of the phrases he choose to research were either uninteresting and obvious, or so obscure, I didn't really care about their origins.

I found this book interesting but believe that in some cases the given derivation of, especially phrases, is either incomplete - there could be another one or two derivations - or inaccurate. A case in point is the phrase "Mind your Ps and Qs". Many a historian of handset print have said that it also refers to not confusing the lower case letters P and Q when setting type as they are backwards when viewed front on. I find the book "What We Say" by Webb Garrison to be more accurate in my opinion.

This is a non-scholarly, non-academic collection of word origins compiled in the 1940s by a lawyer. Many of the expressions are out of date ("go to the dickens," "catch a tarter"). Explanations for many of the origins are simply speculative, with dubious support. Probably the greatest value for this book is as material for small talk or trivia questions. Save your money and check it out from a library.

I have always been fascinated by the origen of phrases and sayings, and my interest was piqued when I moved to a rural area and became a "gentleman farmer," and I discovered how many common phrases (like nest egg and bellwhether)have interesting rural origens.

In reading other reviewers' rave reviews, I was very excited to get this book. When I read it, however, I was very disappointed.

On the plus side, yes, the author does cover a lot of common phrases, and if you are reading purely for entertainment and don't expect to rely on the book as being factually accurate, you'll probably enjoy this book.

On the down side, it is, frankly, poorly written and edited. If I didn't have personal experience raising chickens and thus already understood what a nest egg really is, I probably wouldn't have really understood the author's explanation. The same goes for "dead as a doornail"--if I hadn't spoken with a carpenter, I would not have understood this author's explanation. It's clear to me that, for many of the entries, the author was repeating something he had heard without really understanding it himself, so the explanations are just not very good.

In addition, many (perhaps half) of the "common" phrases he lists are not common. In fact, there are many that I have never heard of at all, and checking with friends and relatives, none of them had ever heard of these phrases either. So the title of the book is misleading, in that many of the phrases are not only NOT common, but completely unheard-of.

Another very major problem I had with this book is that some explanations are just downright wrong, and you don't even have to know anything about the phrase to realize that the author is wrong. For example, he claims "flying off the handle" is when an axe slips out of one's hands and goes flying dangerously off. You don't need to have used an axe to realize that he has described "losing your grip," not "flying off the handle."

Flying off the handle is when the metal axeHEAD comes loose from the wooden handle and flies off. This can happen at any time in the up- or down- swing; it is thrown off at high speed due to being at the end of a stick; the person wielding the axe is not harmed by his actions; but the axehead is both highly dangerous and completely unpredictable in its direction, making any nearby innocent bystander a potential target. Hence, a person who suddenly and violently attacks someone else (verbally or otherwise), with no warning, is exactly analogous to an axehead that is "flying off the handle."

Again, I'm sure that many if not most of the people who read this book will find it enjoyable and interesting. Just be warned that the book is incomplete, of questionable writing quality, and contains a number of significant errors.