Where does the expression "Holding the bag" come from?
832324
The story of this thing was told to me years upon years ago by my grandfather--and I do not remember how the exact thing goes-- but it was some type of scam that was popular back in the early 1900's -- It had something to do with a bait and switch scheme--whereby an individual put up a certain amount of money into a kind of slush fund thing (supposedly) and the money(the people running the scam had quite a bit of it to show the mark) went into a bag and the bag got shifted around a lot and then the individual who was being scammed was left with the bag (supposedly with everyone's money) while the others went to make some kind of deal-----only thing is---they never come back-- and the person waiting---learns very soon that the bag he is holding has nothing but worthless paper in it--- hence-- he is left holding not much more than the bag ---
1000497
i dont know the origin, but i am kind of old and i have heard it since i was young.  it was a line in a country song several years ago, i cant remember song or artist though.\n\nit means that you admire someone very much, usually but not always, in a lovers type of way. \n\nshe thinks that he put the moon in to the sky (he hung the moon).\n\n\n\ni live in the southeast.
1004137
We would say "pinch, poke..you owe me a coke"\nI imagine it originated in some play ground somewhere....obviously after coke originated
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!
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
843730
With your loin cloth?\n\nIt's a reference to the dress styles of those days.\n\nIn todays context, we'd say "roll up your sleeves".
748780
Try searching under the spelling "tickety-boo"\n\n"But some find a link with the British Army in India, suggesting it comes from the Hindi phrase tikai babu, which is translated as “it’s all right, sir”."
131918
The phrase means to die.  It comes from the following:  The wooden frame that slaughtered animals were hung from is known as a bucket. The death spasms of the animals caused them to kick the bucket. \n\nI refer to the site below for all of my phrase origin needs.
849191
T-Bag is a character who has appeared in series of ITV children's television programmes written by Grant Cathro and Lee Pressman.\n\nALSO ... To dip a hairy scrotum sack into another persons mouth.
1053497
Others have answered (correctly) what it would mean is a medical situation regarding male physiology and development.  Please don't take this as an idiot reply, but it is a saying that refers to a males manhood, masculinity or confronting conflict or aggression.  Having "balls" is the slang way of you're a man and will stand up or defend what you or your friend believes in when challenged by another man.  It also means that if someone says that to you they don't have any respect for you since you won't stand up for yourself or beliefs.  Example....if a bully or jerk pushes you around, makes offensive remarks about your wife and children or "steals your lunch money" and you back down and just walk away without doing anything in response; your friend or anyone nearby might say, "Your balls haven't dropped yet".  Bottom line your friend is calling you a wimp, a candy-ass or a coward.  Not exactly a boost for your ego.  And the word will get around depending on the incident.  Sorry for the long answer, but I wanted to make it clear that no man (or their family or friends) wants to be told that.
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
215323
Boy, that is a good one to bring back memories. It was one of my father's less obnoxious expressions. I now wonder how it got started in the first place. He used it in a situation like, I would say, "I am going to the movies tonight." He would answer,yelling "In a pig's eye!" "Your staying home and cleaning the cellar!!"   He was not the best father and this was one more way he would endear himself to me. So I guess it means NO WAY,  CAN'T HAPPEN, NOT LIKELY
904545
Its a motorcycle Company or\n\n\nDo I look like I give a fuck? An expression of apathy. Possibly abbreviated for the first time by a grocery bagger in Melbourne, Florida, U.S.A. in 1985, it could have attained worldwide usage through United States Army service from 1986 - 1989.
350
It means to ride on the back of something else. The term itself is just a derivation of the phrase "pick back", which meant to throw something on your back for the purpose of carrying it.
225140
I don't know if there's much etymology of the phrase, but here's an article about it which puts forth some interesting possibilities of the origin.\n\nQuote from the site:\n\n"Some linguists and historians think the expression must have been well known during the war years, citing a story about General Eisenhower's dog. The story goes that the dog (Felix) urinated on a map and the officers joked that the enemy was "pissed off." (Leonard Mosely, Marshall, 1982)."
343729
I don't know i am Flabbergasted! Joking!\n\nThe British comedian Frankie Howerd used to say in mock astonishment: “I’m flabbergasted—never has my flabber been so gasted!”. That’s about as good an explanation for the origin of this word as you’re likely to get. It turns up first in print in 1772, in an article on new words in the Annual Register. The writer couples two fashionable terms: “Now we are flabbergasted and bored from morning to night”. (Bored—being wearied by something tedious—had appeared only a few years earlier.) Presumably some unsung genius had put together flabber and aghast to make one word.\n\nThe source of the first part is obscure. It might be linked to flabby, suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake like a jelly. It can’t be connected with flapper, in the sense of a person who fusses or panics, as some have suggested, as that sense only emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. But flabbergasted could have been an existing dialect word, as one early nineteenth-century writer claimed to have found it in Suffolk dialect and another—in the form flabrigast— in Perthshire. Further than this, nobody can go with any certainty.
259497
british:  valise, overnighter, overnight bag, overnight case usage: a small overnight bag for short trips \n\nbag, traveling bag, grip, suitcase, baggage, luggage \nusage: a portable rectangular traveling bag for carrying clothes; "he carried his small bag onto the plane with him"