Where does the Phrase "come and look at my etchings" derive from?
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."
441334
my quote that i have always used and "owned- :) " since high school is\n~Amor Vincit Omnia~\n\n---it means Love Conquers All, plus it sounds really cool and looks pretty when it is written.the end.\n\n\n---P.S.!!! --Don't even think about stealing it!!! It is mine only! :)
591516
It's slang in the Rap Music world. Just means "let me see those shiny platinum metal plates lined with diamonds on your teeth please?"
499282
U.K. origin. Means watch your pints & quarts to an ale drawer. Now it means to mind your manners.
472840
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there are several speculative derivations.\n\nThe first thing to say is that the phrase seems to be unrelated to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is made word in the phrase "fight like cat and dog". In fact "raining cats and dogs" doesn't make a great deal of literal sense and the explanations below that attempt to link the phrase to felines, canines and weather seem rather feeble. \n\nHere goes though - take your choice.\n\nIt comes from mythology. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms and sailors associated them with rain. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.\n\n\nCats and dogs were supposed to be washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a lease of life with the message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:\n\nI'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."\n\nThis is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking, but, least there be any doubt... \n\nDogs lived in thatched roofs? No, of course they didn't. Even accepting that mad idea, for them to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be on the outside - hardly the intuitive place for an animal to shelter from bad weather.\n\n\nThe phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. \n\nThe idea that seeing a dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is far fetched, but just about believable.\n\n\nAnother suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall. \n\nWell, again. No evidence. If the phrase were 'raining cats' or if there also existed a French word, dogadoupe we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't lets pass this by. \nReturning to facts rather than idle speculation, we do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's The City Wit, has the line:\n\n"It shall raine .. Dogs and Polecats".\n\nPolecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large. \n\nIn a form more like the current version it appears in Jonathan Swift’s 'A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation' in 1738: \n\n"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".\n\nMore likely than any of the versions given above is that this is just a nice descriptive turn of phrase, which doesn't relate to any particular event or practise. \n\nThere's a similar phrase originating from the north of England - "it's raining stair-rods". No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. Its just a rather good vivid phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain.\n\nAnother similar phrase is "it’s raining like pitchforks", the first known reference of which is D. Humphreys' Yankey in England, 1815:\n\n"I'll be even with you, if it rains pitchforks - tines downwards."
778170
I'm not entirely sure, but I think it originated with the Rolling Stones as they described their backstage parties for an interview of somesort. The saying has pretty much been adopted by every rock group and wannabe rocker eversince as a way of answering why they're in the music buisness.
482885
As everyone says, yes it's a derivation of 'God Blind Me'. There are a huge number of Cockney phrases, most based on Cockney Rhyming Slang, that are in popular use in the UK. For example 'let's have a butchers' - meaning let's have a look, from rhyming slang 'butcher's hook'. Phrases like barnet, for hair (Barnet Fair), bread as in money (bread and honey) are still used - albeit usually knowingly as a nod to the past. There are some good sites for cockney rhyming slang, including a fun translator, see links below. Have a, um, butchers...
1171679
In the old days, the orchestra was in a pit at the front of the stage.  Reluctant actors were told to, "walk to center stage, turn and face the music"  because the music would be coming from the orchestra pit.\n\nIt has now become an idiom to mean you should meet your problems or fears head on...face them in other words.
317290
According to Mencken's 'American Language' and the 'Thesaurus of American Slang' by Berry and Van den Bark, 'lam, lammister' and 'on the lam' -- all referring to hasty departure -- were common in thieves' slang before the start of this century. Mencken quotes a newspaper report on the origin of 'lam' which actually traces it indirectly back to Shakespeare's time -- 'Its origin should be obvious to anyone who runs over several colloquial phrases for leavetaking, such as 'beat it' and 'hit the trail'...The allusion in 'lam' is to 'beat,' and 'beat it' is Old English, meaning 'to leave.' During the period of George Ade's 'Fables in Slang' (1900), cabaret society delight in talking slang, and 'lam' was current. Like many other terms, it went under in the flood of new usages of those days, but was preserved in criminal slang. A quarter of a century later it reappeared.' The Sage of Baltimore goes on to quote a story from the 'New York Herald Tribune' in 1938 which reported that 'one of the oldest police officers in New York said that he had heard 'on the lam' thirty years ago." From the "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1977, 1988).
938670
It is not a poem. It is originally from the novel by Charles Dickens,  A Tale of Two Cities.  It is the opening sentence to the novel.  The actual quote is: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.   It is one of the most famous lines in all of literature and quoted very often.  I believe the sentence concerns the French Revolution.
935484
Interesting. Where did you find the quote?
483960
It is one of those sayings whose exact origins is unknown, it obviously refers to things kept secret or hidden. In the past it may actually have had something to do with someone who had died under mysterious circumstances. It was brought into literary use by Thackeray in 1845.
16134
It is a Funny Quotes or you can say One-liner thought.\ni think it is by "Fossel"
785422
It's probably from Aesop's Fables. That's where most quotes like that come from.
446304
I found this on line,\n\n"Devious Derivations: Popular Misconceptions -- and More than 1,000 True Origins of Common Words and Phrases" by Hugh Rawson (toExcel, Iuniverse.com, 1994, 2000). This reference has some new information on the origins listed here (new information in parenthesis), new origins and what could be the actual origin. \n\n: : 1. Orrin Kendall biscuits, which soldiers ate during the Civil War. \n: : 2. Short for Aux Cayes, a Haitian port that American sailors praised for its rum. \n: : 3. Old Keokuk, a Native American tribal chief who was said to have signed treaties with his initials. \n: : 4. OK stands for "all correct" or the illiterate phrase "Orl Korrect." \n: : 5. U.S. President Martin Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" -- OK for short. He was a native of Kinderhook, N.Y.\n: : 6. Choctaw word "okeh," (or "hoke") meaning "indeed" (or "It is so.")\n: : 7. Scottish "auch aye", meaning "ah yes." (Or "och aye," meaning "okay.")\n: : 8. From the French maritime phrase "au quai" meaning "at dock", and therefore at last safe from the ravages of the open sea.\n: : 9. '0 killed' - the report of the night's death toll during the First World War. \n: : 10. All clear after the shoot-out at O.K. Corral. \n: : 11. Instruments calibrated at an Observatory at Kew had, affixed to them, a stamp, or impression, to authenticate that calibration. This stamp was O K - Observatory Kew. \n\n: : New origins from Mr. Rawson's book:\n: : 12. The abbreviation is for Oberst Kommandant, German for "Colonel in Command," used by either -- take your pick -- a General Schliessen or Baron von Steuben when initialing letters and orders during the American Revolution.\n: : 13. It comes from the name of a freight agent, Obadiah Kelly, whose initials were widely disseminated on bills of lading.\n: : 14. The abbreviation is for Open Key, popularized by telegraphers in the 1860s.\n: : 15. It comes from the names of Lords Onslow and Kilbracken, who initialed bills after they were read and approved in England's House of Lords. \n: : 16. From a misreading of "Order Recorded" on official documents.\n: : 17. Or from Finnish "oikea," correct.\n: : 18. From the Greek "olla," all, plus "Kalla," good.\n\n: : Professor Allen Walker Read of Columbia University, "finally unveiled its (O.K.'s) origins in a series of magisterial articles in 'American Speech' in 1963 and 1964.What Professor Read discovered was that the abbreviation arose in a humorous manner at a time when Americans were indulging in a great deal of wordplay, including abbreviations, acronyms, puns and intentional mispronunciations and misspellings. The earliest example of O.K. that he unearthed (and it is so far still the oldest known specimen) is from the Boston 'Morning Post' of March 23, 1839. It appears in connection with a note by the paper's editor, Charles Gordon Greene, about a visit to New York of some members of the local Anti-Bell-Ringing Society. (The A.B.R.S., as it was usually known, was itself something of a joke, having been formed the previous year to oppose -- its name to the contrary -- an ordinance of the Boston Common Council against ringing dinner bells.) In an aside, Mr. Greene suggested that if the Bostonians were to return home via Providence, they might be greeted by one of his rivals, the editor of that city's 'Journal,' who 'would have the 'contribution box,' et ceteras, o.k. -- all correct -- and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.'.Thus, it appears that O.K. was invented, possibly by Greene, as an abbreviation of the jocular 'Oll' or perhaps 'Orl korrect,' meaning "All right.' This explanation would seem farfetched, except for Read's finding that it dovetai
458592
As far as I know it comes from the theater, when the director would say "let the show begin". hope this helps
965767
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/59100.html