What is the origin of the phrase "blue murder?
598749
The expression "blue murder" seems to have originally emerged as a translation of the French exclamation "morbleu." When something terrible happened, a French person might cry out "mort Dieu" ("God’s death!"). This became "morbleu," probably by the common toning-down-a-curse-word process (as in "hell" becomes "heck"), and was translated as "blue death" or "blue murder". \n\nAnother French use of "bleu" in an exclamation of terror or astonishment is "sacre bleu," which seems to have been another tone-down-a-curse-word phenomenon, as "sacre Dieu" (holy God!) became "sacre bleu."\n\nHaving theorized all that, "blue" also has a history of being used in English as an intensifier, as in "blue funk" or "blue blazes."\n\nAnyway, there's my two cents.  :)
1151569
Check "Blue Murder at St. Trinian's" \nhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051423/
998592
It comes from the early 1800s in London.  The term "pig" for a contemptable person was around a long time before that.  Particularly, the name refers to a certain group of Police called the Bow Street Runners that criminals referred to as China Street Pigs.
821509
I read a magazine article saying that in the old days when they had a worker in their village they wanted to get rid of they burnt down that person's house so that they would leave the village. That is where "fired" came from.\n\nAt least that is how the magazine's Historic Trivia column described the origin.
671615
it comes from the fruit "baneberry" which was a poisonous fruit given to enemies in old England.\nThe actual expression is "bane of my life", meaning "he will be the death of me.
18371
It is an idiom intended to mean "be careful, pay attention to detail"  it has morphed, in recent times, to mean many other things including "be polite".\n\nThere are several theories about it's origin, but the one I believe makes the most sense is - mind your Pints and Quarts.  Meaning to keep track of what you order in a pup so you are not over charged.
713364
Someone on mindlesscrap.com tried to answer this, but I think they came up with a very inadequate answer:\n\n "The phrase started up in the 1980s by teens in the United States.  It's an offshoot of the use of the word "cool" that had been in existence since the 1940s.  That usage was associated with the cool jazz movement of the 1940s, especially Charlie Parker's 1947 record Cool Blues."\n\nI like my guess better:\n\nIt came from the Grateful Dead culture.  At each G.D concert, there'd be people who would serve up vegetarian fare and love.  Someone started saying that, inspired by the cold bean dish which made a great dip, and didn't require any extra fuel.
335507
It's actually "Thou shalt not murder."\n\nLet me elaborate.  A "murder" is an unlawful killing.  For example, in the New Testament, Christ says that if a person hate without a cause, that person has murdered in his heart.  The operative words are "without a cause."\n\nGod ordered certain peoples to be killed because they had become so sinful, so evil, that they were hurting themselves and people around them.  For example, one king had conquered 40 other kings, cut off their thumbs and big toes, and then had them scavange for food under his table.\n\nEver try to pick up food with out thumbs or walk without big toes?\n\nWhat will become of the peoples God wiped out?  The Bible says that these people will be ressurrected.  They aren't banished to hell fire.  They will all be raised from the dead and have a chance to do better.\n\nSo it's really like God forcing them to take a nap until He can deal with them.
166222
Great question.  I'm glad you asked it.\n\nThe answer is; "blue, with rubber sides".\n\n\n???\n\nEDIT: Oh, a newspaper form?  Why didn't you say so?\n\nNEW YORK Today, while millions of Yahoo users watched, someone posted a question that wasn't a question.  According to sources, the "question" didn't even make any sense.  After other users attempted to humorously suggest that the question could be made a little clearer, the original poster ignored them and posted more irrelevant information.  Yahoo authorities have no comment.\n\n\n\nDUDE!!  Read the answers.  What do you want to know here?  What robberies?  Where?  What about them?  What do you mean "newspaper style"? You realize we're only 40-something days into 2006, right?
1015729
I remember a similar poem from Peter Opie’s The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, published in 1959:\n\n"One bright day, in the middle of the night.  Two dead men got up to fight.  Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other.  A deaf policeman heard the noise and came and shot the two dead boys.  And if you don't believe this lie is true, ask the blindman, he saw it too."\n\nalong with:\n\nOnce upon a time there were two skunks; one named In, the other named Out.  Now when In was in, Out was out.  And when Out was in, In was out.  Well, one day, Out was in and In was out.  The Mother Skunk said, "Out, go out and bring In in."  So, Out went out and brought In in.  The Mother Skunk asked, "How did you find In so quick, Out?"  Out replied, "In stinked.".
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.
233343
The phrase is Cellar Door. It's from the movie Donnie Darko, which is one of my favorites.
70080
I've forgotten the exact details of the story,but once there was a man who for one reason or another was being unjustly hanged in Dublin.The hangman didn't tie the noose properly and instead of breaking his neck,the man slowly choked,hanging there.His wife begged for him to be released,but the only thing that the cruel judge would allow was for her to pull on his leg,speeding up his choking,and killing him faster.That's where the term comes from.
951099
Malice is a legal term referring to a party's intention to do injury to another party. Malice is either expressed or implied. Express malice occurs when a party gives notice of the intention to commit a crime. Implied malice occurs when, in the course of nefarious or unlawful doings, a party causes the death of another party or does harm to another. Malice, in a legal sense, may be inferred from the evidence and imputed to the defendant, depending on the nature of the case.\n\nIn many kinds of cases, malice must be found to exist in order to convict (for example malice aforethought is an element of the crime of murder in many criminal jurisdictions). In civil law cases, a finding of malice allows for the award of greater damages, or for punitive damages. The legal concept of malice is most common in Anglo-American law, and in legal systems derived from the English common law system.\n------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nDegrees of murder\nBefore the famous case of Furman v. Georgia in 1972, most states distinguished two degrees of murder. While the rules differed by state, a reasonably common scheme was that of Pennsylvania, passed in 1794: "Murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, shall be deemed murder of the first degree; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree."[10] "Murder one", as the term was popularized by novels and television, carried a penalty of death, or life in prison, while the penalty for "murder two" was generally around 20 years in prison.\n\nAfter the Supreme Court placed new requirements on the imposition of the death penalty, most states adopted one of two schemes. In both, third degree murder became the catch-all, while first degree murder was split. The difference was whether some or all first degree murders should be eligible for the most serious penalty (generally death, but sometimes life in prison without the possibility of parole.).\n\nThe first scheme, used by Pennsylvania among other states: \nFirst Degree Murder: All premeditated murders, and (in some states) murders involving certain especially dangerous felonies, such as arson or rape, or committed by an inmate serving a life sentence. \nSecond Degree Murder: Any felony murder not a first degree murder. \nThird Degree Murder: All other murder.
978058
It all starts with the Latin Phrase "Mia Culpa" Which means my fault. A black Student in a classroom in East side Chicago. trying to be the class clown When asked by the Teacher what it meant stood up and said my bad. Everybody laughed and it became a catchphrase.
1168033
sacre bleu  \nstereotypical Fr. oath, 1869, from Fr. sacré bleu, lit. "holy blue," a euphemism for sacré Dieu (1768), "holy God."
730419
Probably 2.\n\nMIND YOUR PS AND QS\n\nA puzzling and quirky idiom\n\nThere has recently been a discussion on the Usenet newsgroup alt.usage.english about this somewhat outdated saying. As so often happens, a series of posters have recounted the explanations they’ve heard about its origins without really advancing the discussion. It would be difficult to reach a conclusion in any case, as the facts to base it on have been lost. All we can do is theorise, which can be fun, but it does tend to generate more heat than light. Here, for what its worth, are the facts so far as I know them.\n\nIts meaning in recent times—and the one I learned as a child in west London nearly 50 years ago—has been “to mind one’s manners”, “to behave properly”. This is a weakened sense to the one it had in the nineteenth century, when it meant, according to Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Historical Slang: “to be careful, exact, or prudent in behaviour”.\n\nThese are some of the explanations I’ve seen advanced in various places:\n\n    * Advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q.\n    * Similar advice to a printer’s apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing.\n    * Jocular, or perhaps deadly serious, advice to a barman not to confuse the letters p and q on the tally slate, on which the letters stood for the pints and quarts consumed “on tick” by the patrons.\n    * An abbreviation of mind your please’s and thank-you’s.\n    * Instructions from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately.\n    * An admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues, that is, their pigtails.\n\nIt is possible to put forward objections to all of these. Why should p and q be singled out for attention in handwriting, when similar problems occur with b and d? This comment might be thought to apply with even greater force to the poor printer’s apprentice. The pints and quarts explanation sounds reasonable, provided that men in bars used to drink beer by the quart, as in fact they did. The French dancing-master explanation sounds just too far-fetched to be credible, as does the one about the seamen. The mind your please’s and thank-you’s seems just as unlikely as the others, but is seriously advanced by some dictionaries, the current edition of the Collins English Dictionary among them.\n\nThere are two similar usages recorded:\n\n    * There was once an expression P and Q, often written pee and kew, which was a seventeenth-century colloquial expression for “prime quality”. This later became a dialect expression (the English Dialect Dictionary reports it in Victorian times from Shropshire and Herefordshire). OED2 has a citation from Rowlands’ Knave of Harts of 1612:\n    * “Bring in a quart of Maligo, right true: And looke, you Rogue, that it be Pee and Kew.” Nobody is really sure what either P or Q stood for. To say they’re the initials of “Prime Quality” seems to be folk etymology, because surely that would make “PQ” rather than “P and Q”. Partridge says that the phrase learn your Ps and Qs, was common about 1820, again being advice to children who may be confused about the two letters.\n\nYou may feel the first of these tends to confuse the issue rather than illuminate it, and you may be right. It may just be coincidence. However, the second does tend to support the idea that it relates to children learning their alphabets. If I had to make a choice, I’d plump for the alphabet-learning origin.\n\nWhat we do know is that mind your Ps and Qs was first recorded in 1779 but that it is slowly dying out. To lose it would be a pity, as it is a link to the past and makes a good subject for some quiet speculation and ingenious attempts at explanation. In common with so many words and phrases in English, its origins must remain