“Break a leg”
The Victorian era was a rough time and nowhere more so than in the theater. Actors were often paid by the line so the lead actor with the most lines might as well have had a giant target painted on his back in the hopes that once he was eliminated another member would get that top spot. It was the original reality show full of (literal) backstabbing, mysteriously frayed ropes holding up heavy equipment and catty gossip. Often just to stay safe, the lead actor would attempt to incapacitate, or break the legs, of his fellow actors. It was not uncommon to see a play where the entire cast hobbled around on crutches. The lead actor had to break enough limbs to make it impossible for his fellows to sneak up on him from behind or chase him into a dark alley. If one could break enough legs, one would have the good fortune to remain in the spotlight, hence to “break a leg” came to mean “good luck”.
“Raining cats and dogs”
It’s important to remember that before Webster wrote his famous book “Dicshunary: A listing of all those most florious and distinsuisheed wordes in ye olde Englisshe langwaj” no one could agree on a single way to spell every word. Hence a word such as reign could be spelled a variety of different ways and mean a king’s reign, a horse’s reign, a summer rain or Raine Wilson depending on the context. So the expression “Raining cats and dogs” actually began as an acknowledgment of Queen Katherine and her not so secret lovers who were all named Douglas being the group of people actually in charge of the country, or “Reigning Kath and Dougs”. After their deaths the next Queen or King or whoever was in charge ordered that this phrase be dropped from the language. However, people were reluctant to give it up as it had become, as one writer put it at the time “ye moste favoritted in alle ye olde cowntry”. In order to circumvent the ban they changed it to “Reigning cats and dogs” and everyone in the country simultaneously agreed to make it mean a heavy rain.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!”
Back when ships were made entirely of wood, let’s say 1433, it was the job of one crew member to constantly patrol the ship searching for signs of insect infestation, as any insect that ate wood could imperil the safety of the crew. If he found any termites, or wood beetles as they were then known, he immediately shouted out the warning “Ladies and gentlemen, the beetles!” All the crew members would then rush to the spot, screaming like little girls, fainting and singing in order to frighten them away. It rarely worked and a great many ships were lost. Five hundred years later Ed McMahon would do a callback to the phrase when introducing the new rock and roll band from England on his Late Show with David Letterman.
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