The phrase balls to the wall, meaning an all-out effort, comes from the world of aviation. On an airplane, the handles controlling the throttle and the fuel mixture are often topped with ball-shaped grips, referred to by pilots as (what else?) balls. Pushing the balls forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit increases the amount of fuel going to the engines and results in the highest possible speed.
The British phrase Bob's your uncle (meaning "everything's going to be ok") is thought to have derived from a particular act of nepotism in the British government. Robert, Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, appointed Arthur Balfour, his nephew, to the post of Secretary for Ireland in 1887. Balfour was, at the time, considered young and a political lightweight, and the post was a high-profile, political plum currently embroiled in the question of Irish independence. Hence, Balfour's career was successful because "Bob was his uncle".
To buy the farm is to die, usually in a battle or aircraft accident. The phrase as we know it dates to the 1950s, but has its roots in older variants. The farm in the phrase is a metaphor for a grave, the last plot of land a soldier will own.
Fortnight is a contraction of the Old English féowertyneniht, literally meaning "fourteen nights".
Freelancing is a form of self-employment, where one hires out one’s services instead of being employed on a permanent basis. This term dates to the Middle Ages, referring to a knight (who presumably carried a lance) who served as a mercenary, as opposed to pledging fealty to a single lord.
The term Generation X is much older than those that are usually assumed to belong to it. Generation X is a lost or disaffected cohort of youths; the X is a reference to the algebraic term for an unknown quantity. In recent years it has been applied to those coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, the children of the Baby Boomers, although the term is much older than this generation.
The psychological disturbance termed hysteria was originally believed to be a disease of women resulting from some disturbance in the uterus, the root hyster- coming from the Greek word for womb.
The term keister originally referred to a satchel or suitcase. The term later came to refer to the buttocks due to the fact that it was common practice on long journeys to sit on a satchel (because most early carriage seats were not cushioned).
The term reading the riot act comes from Britain’s Riot Act of 1715, which stated that when 12 or more people were engaged in a riot, any magistrates on hand could command them to disperse. Anyone not obeying the command could be arrested for a felony. So reading the riot act is a public warning of dire consequences if behavior continues.
A red herring is a deliberate misdirection, and the term comes from hunting. Poachers would interpose themselves between the prey and the hunting party and drag a red herring across the trail to mislead the dogs. This would give them the opportunity to bag the prey themselves. A red herring was chosen because dog trainers often used the pungent, smoked fish to create a trail when training their hounds. The dogs, upon encountering the herring scent, would follow that trail as it was the one they had been trained with.
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