Mad hatter... pie in the sky... egg on your face. We use these phrases every day, yet how many of us know what they really mean or where they came from?

Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack (Hardcover Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack (Hardcover

Not a sit-down and read cover to cover but a reference to phrases. If you overheard someone say he's "Dressed to Kill", you may conjure up a Ninja preparing to assassinate a dignitary. But it means "to suggest they are smart, fashionable and set to make a romantic conquest." Now I find out about the romantic conquest. Boy, have I been missing out all these years. I think I'll refer to it more often.

For me this doesn't really explain it satisfactorily. What about the info about the root of the Latin proverb? (although according to my sources the phrase comes from a collection of medieval French poems "Li Proverbe au Vilain" which was published around 1190) - & the little quip at the end... not my sense of humour. But the roots of “dicey” lie, not in the clouds, but on the gambling tables (or the floor of an RAF hangar). “Dicey” comes from “dice,” the plural of “die,” the little spotted cubes of chance used in many games. A mission that was “dicey” to the RAF pilots was fraught with danger, and their safe return was as uncertain as a roll of the dice they often used to pass their time on the ground. This sense of both chance and danger has carried over to our modern use of “dicey” to mean “seriously risky,” often with overtones of disaster if the effort fails. Origin: From the Burmese belief that albino elephants are sacred. They can’t be used for work and they must be lavished with the ultimate amount of care. If the King of Siam wished to get rid of a particular courtier, he gave a gift of a white elephant. The courtier dared not offend the King with a refusal although he was fully aware that the cost of upkeep of such an animal was ruinous. For many centuries, brass has been taken as a type of hardness, imperishableness, insensibility, etc.; for example, the Book of Job, 6:12, is as follows in the Later Version (1395) of the Wycliffe Bible:...

red herring in Traditional Chinese - Cambridge Dictionary red herring in Traditional Chinese - Cambridge Dictionary

long and short is...the white elephants resides, i suspect, in fort knox..as that was one of two possible likelys the bus passed through... At coffee mornings, fetes and similar events in the village where I grew up there was often white elephant stall, which had all sorts of odds and ends that people want to get rid of.

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If you happen to be a bootlegger, your profession recalls the Wild West outlaws who sold illegal alcohol by concealing slender bottles of whiskey in their boots. If you're on cloud nine, you owe a nod to the American Weather Bureau's classification of clouds, the ninth topping out all others at a mountainous 40,000 feet. Not sure it’s what you had in mind but concerning phrases with colour adjective+animal, in French we have the following sayings and phrases:

Red Herrings And White Elephants: The Origins of the Phrases

The Origins of the Phrases We Use Everyday - The biggest selling non-fiction book of the decade..... Mad hatter . . . pie in the sky . . . egg on your face. We use these phrases every day, yet how many of us know what they really mean or where they came from? If you happen to be a bootlegger, your profession recalls the Wild West outlaws who sold illegal alcohol by concealing slender bottles of whiskey in their boots. If you're on cloud nine, you owe a nod to the American Weather Bureau's classification of clouds, the ninth topping out all others at a mountainous 40,000 feet. If you opt for the hair of the dog the morning after, you're following the advice of medieval English doctors, who recommended rubbing the hair of a dog into the wound left by the animal's bite. A White Elephant is an expression used to describe something that has, or will, become a huge burden to those who possess it. It suggests the cost of possession could ruin a person financially. For this we travel to Thailand, in the days when it was known as Siam. According to the legend white elephants … Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth This is a British book, and so some of the phrases were unfamiliar to me. But that's a relative few. The majority are phrases within my experience.A delightful compendium of anecdotes on everything from minding your p's and q's to pulling out all the stops, Red Herrings and White Elephants is an essential handbook for language-lovers of all ages.