where did the phrase codswallop come from?
467168
This mainly British colloquial expression is recorded only from the 1960s, but is certainly older. Its origin is uncertain. Some argue it may be from cods, an old term for the testicles that derives from the Anglo-Saxon sense of cod, a bag. It is also suggested that wallop may be connected with the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold (not with the word meaning a heavy blow).\nOne explanation has it that it refers to the late Hiram Codd, who—despite his archetypally American first name—was British, born in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in 1838. He spent his life working in the soft drinks business. In the 1870s, he designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck, which the pressure of the gas in the fizzy drink forced against a rubber washer. Making the bottle was a technical challenge, since the ball necessarily had to be larger than the diameter of the neck. It was only in 1876, when he teamed up with a Yorkshire glass blower named Ben Rylands, that the answer was found. The Codd bottle was an immediate success; surviving examples are now highly collectable. You opened them by pushing the ball into the neck, and openers in the shape of short, thin cylinders were supplied for the purpose. One unexpected problem was that children smashed the bottles to use the glass balls as marbles.\nThe suggestion is that drinkers who preferred their tipple to have alcohol in it were dismissive of Mr Codd’s soft drinks. As beer was often called wallop, they referred sneeringly to the fizzy drink as Codd’s wallop, and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish.\nThis story reeks of the approach to word history called folk etymology. As one writer has put it, it seems rather too neat an explanation to be true. But nobody’s come up with anything better.
186636
There is dispute amongst etymologists about the origin of this phrase. As always, disputes only occur where there is no definitive evidence so, as you might guess, there is conflicting circumstantial evidence. I'll put the sources here and let you decide for yourself.\n\nThe two points of view are primarily these:\n\nI.\nThe phrase originated as 'son of a military man' (i.e. a gun). The most commonly repeated version in this strand is that the British Navy used to allow women to live on naval ships. Any child born on board who had uncertain paternity would be listed in the ship's log as 'son of a gun'. While it is attestable fact that, although the Royal navy had rules against it, they did turn a blind eye to women (wives or prostitutes) joining sailors on voyages, so this version has plausibility on its side. The sources for this point of view are:\n\n- The Royal Navy Museum, who confirm that women sometimes travelled on their vessels during the age of sail.\n\n- The Sailor's Workbook; William Henry Smyth, 1867. [son of a gun is] "An epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands at sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage”. \n\n- Fighting Words, Christine Ammer, 1999- "A baby conceived during wartime. In World War I the term denoted the illegitimate offspring of servicemen."\n\n- Jon Bee, a Dictionary of the Turf, 1823, ... means 'a soldier's bastard'. \n\nThe first known printed source is The British Apollo No. 43, 1708 - "You'r a Son of a Gun". That source doesn't mention the military and Smyth's version comes 150 years later, but he was himself a Royal Navy admiral and in a better position than most to know what went on aboard naval ships. Whether or not the military/naval version is the origin it is clear that, in 1823 at least, the term was used with that meaning. \n\nCounter to that you might think it unusual that military men didn't appear to have daughters, or you may just put that down to the prevailing sexism of the time. There are several phrases including the word son, some of them quite recent: \n\nEvery mother's son \nGo on my son \nLike father, like son \nMy son the doctor \nNumber one son \nOn me 'ead, son \n\nwhereas it's difficult to think of anything other than 'don't put your daughter on the stage' for daughters. \n\n\nII. \nThe term is euphemisitic and derived as a conveniently rhyming alternative to 'son of a bitch/whore'. That term has been part of the language for centuries, certainly long enough for people to some up with a euphemism for it. Shakespeare used something like it in King Lear (1605) - "One that art nothing but the composition of a Knave, Begger, Coward, Pandar, and the Sonne and Heire of a Mungrill Bitch." \n\nAlso, other sources in print in the 19th century point to the meaning at least of the phrase as indicating contempt: \n\nBarnam Ingol. Legends, Cynotaph, 1840, "We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun Of a watchman, ‘One o'clock!’ bawling." \n\nTHACKERAY Pendennis, 1849, "What a happy feller I once thought you, and what a miserable son of a gun you really are!" \n\nHarper's Mag. Oct. 1883, 759/2 "Thou lubberly, duck-legged son of a gun." \n\nThe military version has some circumstantial evidence to support it, the rhyming euphemism origin appears to be no more than conjecture. Case unproven.
1064603
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - "Carefree, unconcerned. This is the only meaning of the phrase today, and it dates from the 19th century. Herman Melville has it in 'Moby Dick' (1851): 'A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant.' An earlier meaning was haphazard, as luck would have it. It is seen in Edward Arber's 'An English Garner' (1699): 'The Redcoats cried, 'Shall we fall in order, or go happy-go-lucky?'" From "The Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).
141560
Nobody actually knows where that phrase comes from.  There is an urban legend about where it came from that can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm
482411
[Q] “All my life I have heard the phrase a pig in a poke. Do you know where this phrase originated?”\n[A] Though the current version in full is “Don’t buy a pig in a poke”, don’t buy or accept something without first checking or assessing it, it’s first recorded in London around 1530 in a form intended to be good advice to honourable traders: “When ye proffer the pigge open the poke”, but its best known early appearance is in John Heywood’s A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the proverbes in the Englishe tongue of 1546 (a title usually and with good reason abbreviated to Proverbs), where it appears in the form “Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke”. About 1555, Heywood included it in his other famous compilation work, Epigrammes, in the almost modern form “I will never bye the pig in the poke”.\nMany Americans know a poke as a small bag or sack, which it was also in Heywood’s day (a usage that has survived in Scotland). A poke, for example, was a suitable container into which to stuff a piglet for sale in the local market.\nThe proverb encapsulates that wise advice to purchasers of goods, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware—always inspect the goods before you pay for them. Make the seller open his poke and show you the pig within.\nIncidentally, the proverb has its direct counterparts in other languages, as in the Swedish Köp inte grisen i säcken! However, in other languages it refers to cats, as in French: Acheter chat en poche (“To buy a cat in a pouch”), and German: Die Katze im Sack kaufen (“To buy a cat in a sack”). Why the expressions in these languages refer to cats and not pigs supports a link with another expression, to let the cat out of the bag.
457033
Speculation about its origin is found in Eric Partridge's "Dictionary of Catch Phrases":\n\n"'Come up and see my etchings' was, perhaps, orig. a US students' catchphrase that rapidly gained a much wider currency: throughout the US, thence in Can. and UK and, prob. indicative of US influence in 1943-5, Aus. Formerly I suspected that it was prompted by [Mae West's] 'come up and see me sometime!'; yet it could well have been the other way about. In his letter . . . Prof. S. H. Monk writes: "I am certain that I knew this sentence by the midtwenties. Actually I knew no one who had a collection of etchings or who was suave enough to seduce a young thing in this manner. But the phrase certainly floated in and out of cartoons and jokes. To me, it has an 1890-ish or Edwardian tone, and I suspect that it existed in 'sophisticated' urban society before it ever reached me. I think that this can still sometimes be heard, but it is definitely 'corny'."\nPerhaps confirmatory of Prof. Monk's shrewd remarks is the fact that in Susannah Centlivre's comedy, 'The Man's Bewitched' (1710), Act III, where Belinda, Maria, Constant and Lovely are in the study, and Lovely exclaims, 'Interrogating! Nay, then 'tis proper to be alone; there is a very pretty Collection of Prints in the next Room, Madam, will you give me leave to explain them to you?' Maria answers, 'Any Thing that may divert your Love--Subject.'\nIt should, however, be noted that this catchphrase perhaps derives from Surreyside melodrama--the villain enticing the innocent maiden."
1170816
This originated in the early 1980s. It is generally regarded as an American expression. This item from the New York newspaper the Syracuse Herald-American, Feb. 1982, which is the earliest version in print that I can find, puts that in some doubt. It's in a piece by Jerry Buck, writing out of Los Angeles, about actress Lauren Tewes
323764
"Bollocks" is a swear word meaning testicles in British English. The word is often used figuratively, most commonly as a noun to mean "nonsense" or as an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, but also in a number of other ways; as an adjective to mean "poor quality" or "useless", and in various compound expressions (see below). Due to its versatility, bollocks has been called the Swiss Army Knife of andrological profanities.\n\nPerhaps the best-known international use of the term in this sense is in the title of a Sex Pistols album. Testimony in a resulting lawsuit over the "obscene" term demonstrated that in Old English the word referred to a priest, and could also be used to mean "nonsense" (see Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols for details).
1069817
There are many theories explaining the origin of the word. The debate is still open on that one.\n\nBritish troops gave new derogatroy meaning to the word when the played the song Yankee Doodle Dandy as an insult to the citizens of Boston ("doodle" was a slang word for 'dolt' or 'penis')\nThe version of the song we know today has been altered from the original.\n\nAfter the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Americans taunted the retreating British with the word, giving it a new complimentary sense.\n\nIt now generally refers to an American, without intending to insult.\nIt's most often used to describe residents of the New England states. It's simply a slang word no different than calling a Nova Scotian a "Bluenoser" (after the schooner), or someone from Ontario and "Upper Canuck". They are fun words that add colour to our speech.
276550
The word comes from the Irish word 'Seamrog' diminutive of seamer--a clover.\n\nSham*rock\n\n Any of certain clovers or clover-like plants with leaves in clusters of three that is used as the emblem of Ireland.  This meaning dates from the year 1577.\n\nSaint Patrick, Bishop of Ireland, Founder of our Saint Patrick's Day used the Shamork to show the Irish Chiftons (Ancient Kelts) the meaning (Concept) of the Holy Trinity.
639470
This is a references to an old phrase started, not England, but Scottland... the term was mistranslated by the English in the midst of war. The Term was used by the Scottish to bring out their weapons and black axes, the axes weren't really black but that's a different story. In any case... it is now used to mean "Get ready for the worse"
664889
It started off as a raunchy song from the military, "Do Your Balls Hang Low?" Other verses named other pendulous body parts, easily guessed. It was completely sanitized and became a children's song, often sung at summer camp, preschools, etc. \n\nIn Britain, there is a raunchy rugby song with similar lyrics. This song may have come from an old British naval song that used "Continental soldier" because the four syllables of continental go well with soldier (and rhymes with shoulder - well, kind of!) ... and refers to British American colonists whom British sailors enjoyed taunting. Anything I find about origins, lists simply "Traditional" and "Anonymous."\n\nThe two tunes most often used for this song are "Sailor's Hornpipe" and "Turkey in the Straw."
190965
Many theories as to the origin of this phrase. One has it that tailors used nine yards of material to make a suit (or according to some authors a shirt). The more material you had the more status. Nine yards seems generous even for a fop. Nine has been used as a superlative in other contexts."
885363
Bollocks.\n\nIt was a saying made up from so called skilled tradesmen because the so called jack of all trades were showing them up and proving anybody could do their jobs with a little practise.
66228
Comes from Scottish.  They invented the game, called it "Goff".  Golf is the Americanized version of that word.  Not an acronym for anything, that's absurd.
793676
Sorry you've had such rubbish answers. \n\nI'm usually quite good at this sort of thing, but I'm afraid I can't find any info on the origins of this phrase.\n\nI hope someone more knowledgeable answers you soon!
1006282
hooker Look up hooker at Dictionary.com\n    "prostitute," often traced to the disreputable morals of the Army of the Potomac (American Civil War) under the tenure of Gen. "Fighting Joe" Hooker (1863), and the word probably was popularized by this association at that time. But it is said to have been in use in North Carolina c.1845 ("If he comes by way of Norfolk he will find any number of pretty Hookers in the Brick row not far from French's hotel."). One theory traces it to Corlear's Hook, a disreputable section of New York City. Perhaps related to hooker "thief, pickpocket" (1567), but most likely an allusion to prostitutes hooking or snaring clients. Hook in the figurative sense of "that by which anyone is attracted or caught" is recorded from 1430; and hook (v.) in the figurative sense of "catch hold of and draw in" is attested from 1577; in reference to "fishing" for a husband or a wife, it was in common use from c.1800. All of which makes the modern sense seem a natural step. The family name Hooker (attested from c.975 C.E.) would mean "maker of hooks," or else refer to an agricultural laborer who used a hook (cf. O.E. weodhoc "weed-hook").