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Results: The Curious Origins of Common Phrases

Published on 02/07/2021
By: khoxie
2135
Trivia
1.
1.
RUN OF THE MILL - If something is run of the mill, it's average, ordinary, nothing special. But what does it have to do with milling? It most likely originally referred to a run from a textile mill. It's the stuff that's just been manufactured, before it's been decorated or embellished. There were related phrases like "run of the mine," for chunks of coal that hadn't been sorted by size yet, and "run of the kiln," for bricks as they came out without being sorted for quality yet. Do you ever use the phrase "run of the mill"?
Yes
46%
1056 votes
No
54%
1244 votes
2.
2.
HAVE YOUR WORK CUT OUT - The expression "you've got your work cut out for you" comes from tailoring. To do a big sewing job, all the pieces of fabric are cut out before they get sewn together. It seems like if your work has been cut for you, it should make the job easier, but we don't use the expression that way. The image is more that your task is well defined and ready to be tackled, but all the difficult parts are yours to get to. That big pile of cut-outs isn't going to sew itself together! Do you ever use the phrase "have your work cut out for you"?
Yes
63%
1444 votes
No
37%
856 votes
3.
3.
PUSH THE ENVELOPE - Pushing the envelope belongs to the modern era of the airplane. The "flight envelope" is a term from aeronautics meaning the boundary or limit of performance of a flight object. The envelope can be described in terms of mathematical curves based on things like speed, thrust, and atmosphere. You push it as far as you can in order to discover what the limits are. Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff brought the expression into wider use. Do you ever use the phrase "push the envelope"?
Yes
36%
829 votes
No
64%
1471 votes
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