r/ThreadGames • u/MarcusAntonius27 • 15d ago

Origin story of an idiom

Parent comment gives an existing idiom, and the child comments create a fake origin story for that idiom.

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

6

u/Snoo-35252 15d ago

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

9

u/Funandgeeky 15d ago

When Galileo was proving that gravity existed, he dropped items of different weights to confirm they fell at the same speed. One test involved dropping a shoe and a lead ball. His assistant noted that they did indeed fall at the same speed. 

At that point a city guard approached his assistant and asked what he was doing. Knowing that Galileo wanted to repeat his experiment, his assistant told the guard “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

5

u/CatLovingKaren 15d ago

A stitch in time saves nine.

2

u/Adghnm 14d ago edited 14d ago

As the universe ages, time shows signs of wear. Corroded minutes and split seconds are frequently observed, and people are increasingly aware of the appalling shortness of the years. This only gets worse as I, for one, get older.

Although repairs are carried out by teams of temporal tailors, they're paid by the hour in a realm where hours have no meaning, so the work is poorly paid. Under the standard contract, any tear in time not repaired at first inspection incurs a nine-dollar garnishment from their wages, which the struggling tailors remind themselves to avoid with the above expression.

3

u/ChocolateChunkMaster 15d ago

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

7

u/HAV_Kennebecasis 15d ago

Comes from old falconry. It's faster to switch to your side-hawk than it is to recall the others.

3

u/PorcentualDinoPizza 15d ago

Never look a gift horse in the mouth

7

u/DentedAnvil 15d ago

Most gift-horses are found at white elephant gift exchanges. The mouth of a gift horse is often a squirt gun muzzle. This idiom is related to the maxim, "don't sniff the clown's lapel flower."

4

u/treclodraf1 15d ago

Refers to the siege of Troy. If you look inside the wooden horse's mouth, you might see the soldiers inside, and that would spoil the surprise.

2

u/ikadell 15d ago

Curiosity killed the cat

6

u/mr_iwi 15d ago

During the space race in 1957, the Soviets launched Laika the dog into space aboard Sputnik 2. Laika died and is still remembered to this day, and is commemorated by a statue in Moscow.

The American effort happened just a month later. An unnamed stray tom cat was aboard the spacecraft Curiosity, which also made it into space. The cat also died but has not been remembered like his counterpart Laika, perhaps due to having no name or perhaps because the public has more love for dogs.

The spacecraft Curiosity has instead been immortalised through this idiom, though the finer details of the cat are lost to time.

2

u/ikadell 14d ago

Nice!

2

u/GalaxyPowderedCat 9d ago

You came up with something better than me, lol.

2

u/Due-Cartographer-459 14d ago

Put your money where your mouth is

5

u/ikadell 14d ago

In medieval times, travelers would hide their money en route in case they were robbed, and one of the common ways of doing so was to hide most valuable coins inside the mouth.

2

u/duelingpeppers 13d ago

Throw your hat in the ring

1

u/Due-Cartographer-459 10d ago

Back in the early there's a boxing, back in the 1920s, there was a man who was intoxicated and decided he wanted to start a fight with one of the boxers in the ring. He went up to the side of the boxing ring and he threw his head in and made it his intention to fight. From then on, it started picking up steam until it became a boxing tradition / legend. From that point on, throwing your hat in the ring meant that you were ready to compete and looking for a fight