“Nest Egg” & "No Dice" and the Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions (Pt. 15)

On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson shares another slice of his guide to understanding the baffling mini-mysteries of the English language. The book is Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions and Fun Phrases.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your stories. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. Up next, we continue with
our recurring series about the curious origins of everyday sayings
the stories behind them. Here to join us again is

(00:31):
Andrew Thompson as he continues to share another slaves from
his Ultimate Guide to understanding these mini mysteries, these mini
stories of our precious English language.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
A nest egg is savings that are set aside for
later use, which a person tries to add two, and
that phrase has been used from as early as the
fourteenth century in England. In those days before commercial factory
chicken farming, chickens would lay their eggs in nests in
a coop. A means of giving the chickens hope and
encouraging them to lay more eggs. Farmers used to place

(01:04):
a porcelain or china egg in the nest or the
coop area. The dummy egg was known as a nest
egg and did often induce the chickens to be more productive.
The expression then came to mean someone's financial savings by
the late sixteen hundreds. In the nick of time means
without a second despair, and it began in England. In
the Middle Ages at that time, during team games, there'd

(01:27):
be a tally man to keep score. He would carry
a tally stick and each time a team scored, he
would carve a small nick or notch or groove into
the stick. If the winning nick was added just before
the end of the match, it was known as the
nick in time. The expression later became known as in
the nick of time nineteen to the dozen means to

(01:49):
be going at a very fast pace, and it originated
in the Cornish copper and tin mines in the eighteenth
century in England. Pumps were a necessary piece of equipment
at the mines and were used to hear out the
excess water that had been used in the mining or
that had come in as a result of flooding. Hand
pumps were used to clear the water until the advent
of steam driven pumps. While the traditional hand pumps were

(02:11):
slow and labor intensive, the steam pumps were fueled by
coal and highly efficient. When running at maximum capacity, they
could clear nineteen thousand gallons of water for every twelve
bushels of coal burned, and that's where the nineteen to
the dozen came from. To say, no dice means something
is futile or nothing is happening, and it began in

(02:33):
America in the early twentieth century. Gambling was illegal in
many states at the time, so if game was interrupted
by the police in a raid, men went to great
lengths to hide their dice. When challenged, courts would throw
out illegal gambling cases if no dice could be profited
as evidence. No dice meant no conviction. This led some
gamblers to even swallow their dice to avoid arrest. The

(02:56):
expression was then used colloquially by the nineteen twenties. No
such thing as a free lunch means you never get
anything for nothing, and there's always a hidden cost, And
it began during the eighteen forties in America. Bars and
restaurants at the time began offering a free lunch to
any customer who'd buy a drink. However, the free lunch
was usually something insubstantial, like a salty snack, which did

(03:19):
a little more than encourage the patron to drink more
and spend more money. It soon became apparent that after
a free lunch, people were spending more money than if
they just paid for a proper lunch in the first place.
This technique became a lucrative way for US establishments to
make money, and many even advertised the free lunch in
local newspapers. Not worth his salt means to be ineffective

(03:42):
or not deserving of one's pay, and it drives from
Roman times. Before the invention of can goods and refrigeration,
salt was a valuable commodity in the preservation of food.
Roman soldiers received some of their wages as an allowance
of salt. This was known as a solarium, which takes
us root for sal the Latin word for salt, and

(04:02):
our modern day word salary actually derives from it. If
a soldier did not perform well and was not up
to scratch, it was said that he was not worth
his salt. The expression nothing is certain except for death
and taxes means literally that only those two things are
the certain things in life, and it began in seventeen
twenty six with a book by Daniel Dafoe, who wrote

(04:25):
Robinson Crusoe, but the book was The Political History of
the Devil, where he wrote things as certain as death
and taxes can be more firmly believed. But it was
Benjamin Franklin who coined the phraser made a widespread in
writing about the New Constitution. In a letter in seventeen
eighty nine, he wrote, our new Constitution is now established

(04:47):
and has an appearance that promises permanency. But in this
world nothing can be certain except death and taxes. Off
the cuff means to carry out a task spontaneously or
without preparation. It's a phrase that relates to public speaking
from the eighteen hundreds, when men wore shirts with detachable
collars and cuffs, which made them easy to clean. Politicians

(05:09):
and keynote speakers generally wanted to give an audience the
impression that they were good speakers and could hold people's
attention without any preparation or the need to refer to notes.
It was a common practice at the time to write
notes on their shirtcuffs before a speech. Only they could
see the notes, so the audience had be none. The
wiser politicians would also make additional last minute notes on

(05:30):
their cuffs to counter the arguments of their opponents, and
so the expression came off the cuff. On a wing
in a prayer means to be hopeful but unlikely to succeed,
and it's another expression that stems from World War II.
The story goes that an American pilot flew back to
base with one wing of his plane badly damaged. The

(05:51):
other men at the base remained that he hadn't crashed,
and he told them that he'd been praying the whole
way in. Another pilot then coined the phrase when he
said a wing and a prayer brought you back. The
phrase then got worldwide attention when it was referred to
in two Hollywood films, Flying Tigers starring John Wayne in
nineteen forty two and A Wing and a Prayer in

(06:13):
nineteen forty four. Coming in on a Wing and a
Prayer was also a patriotic song released in nineteen forty
three that popularized the expression.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
And a great job is Always on the production by
Greg Hangler and a special thanks to Andrew Thompson. He
had us laughing out loud here in the studio. The
whole crew. So many of these short stories, and they
are a series of short stories about phrases, are a
laugh out loud funny. And Andrew Thompson is the narrator
and the voice you were listening to, and he's written

(06:43):
a terrific book called Hair of the Dog to paint
the town. Read the curious origins of everyday scenes and
fun phrases. I particularly was laughing at Nesteg because we're well,
we're raising eight chickens, and at key times when we
want the chickens to be a little more productive, we
throw in a fake egg and it works. They think

(07:04):
somehow that they need another one. We have no idea
why it works, but the fake egg has proved to
be well, a great way to get more eggs. So
many good stories. Andrew Thompson on the Curious Origins of
everyday saying, here on our American Stories, folks, if you

(07:31):
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(07:51):
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