What does "as the spitballs flew" mean in?
954476
Spitballs are a common, childish form of fighting -- chewing up bits of paper until they are a sopping wet gob, then throwing this mess at your opponent. The statement is comparing the argument between the 2 medical organizations, where accusations were probably being hurled back and forth, to that kind of childish fighting.
102298
It refers to the Jonestown mass murder/suicide in 1978, where hundreds of people were forced into a tent and made to drink poisoned Flavor Aid (though many people believe it was KoolAid).\n\nMany people use the expression to refer to those who blindly follow a leader into a dangerous or lethal situation.
371386
"Catch 22" is the title of a novel published in 1961, written by Joseph Heller and based on his experiences as a World War II bomber pilot in Europe. The central character in "Catch 22" is the pilot Yossarian, whose all-too-accurate perception of the futility and insanity of war leads him to seek a psychiatric exemption from flying further combat missions. But Yossarian runs smack into what Heller dubbed "Catch 22" ("catch" in this sense meaning "snag"). As Heller put it, "There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22.... If he flew them [more missions] he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."\n\nIn inventing "Catch 22," Joseph Heller had really only given a name to a particularly modern sort of bureaucratic conundrum, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a set of circumstances in which one requirement, etc., is dependent upon another, which is in turn dependent upon the first." More mundane examples of "Catch 22" would be needing a driver's license to get to Motor Vehicles to take your driving test, or my personal favorite, needing to be rich to avoid paying income tax.
811096
What does it mean?  It's a page from the Talmud, as published by the Soncino Press in 1961, from the Tractate called Niddah, the second side of the 44th page.\n\nOn the page, there's a verse explaining, in purely technical terms, at what age an act of intercourse can constitute a betrothal.  This is because sex is one of the ways through which a marriage is made official.  It was never the preferred method, however, and in fact, it was made punishable by rabbinic decree.\n\nYou have to understand that what is being described in that passage is an explanation as to at what age, intercourse is physically possible.  This is purely an explanation so that one can understand the legal implications of such an act.  It is not the same as saying whether such an act is PERMISSIBLE, and in fact, it is strictly forbidden.\n\n"A friendly question?"\n\nI'm not sure, but I kind of have my doubts.  Who spends their time digging through the Talmud for this sort of thing?  And you'll forgive me for guessing that you didn't actually find this by reading the Talmud itself - you would have been reading for a long time before stumbling upon this passage.  On the other hand, this sort of citation (along with other mistranslations, and in some cases, passages that simply don't exist in the Talmud) can be found on all kinds of White Power and Neo-Nazi websites.  Furthermore, if you had actually been studying the Talmud, you probably would have found commentaries and other passages that would have answered your question (including exhortations for a father not to marry off his daughter until she becomes mature and can give her consent).  So might I be so bold as to inquire as to where you found this citation?  You give no context for your question at all.  It looks like you simply expect somebody to look at it and start drawing conclusions about Judaism (which would invariably be false if the reader glances at the page, in translation, casually, and doesn't understand Talmudic methodology, or the context in which this passage occurs).\n\nFor more on this subject, and anti-Semitic Talmud libels in general, see here:\n\nhttp://www.geocities.com/fightinghate/OnThatLieMarryingMinor.html\n\nhere: http://www.angelfire.com/mt/talmud/three.html\n\nand here: http://www.geocities.com/fightinghate/Talmud
165127
Could mean:\n\nA military punishment now discontinued. It was a flogging-stool.\n\nor\n\nTo sail aboard a ship, brig, or boat, etc.
86615
It often implies that you have made a serious mistake, but more strictly it indicates that something you have done (or some turn of events) has left you looking extremely embarrassed or foolish.\nIt feels like one of those expressions that have been around for ever, but the evidence suggest that it’s an American expression from the middle of last century (its first known appearance was in an American television series about 1951). It’s possible, though, that it is somewhat older, though I haven’t been able to find it in my large collection of out-of-copyright e-texts, which suggests it is more recent than the 1920s.\nI know of two possibilities for where it came from. My assumption to start with was that it was a comment on a minor social gaffe at a meal, when poor manners or sloppy eating left egg around your mouth. The late John Ciardi, however, suggested an origin in the lower and more rowdy kind of theatrical performance, in which an incompetent actor would have been pelted with eggs and forced off the stage.\nAfter I wrote the first version of this piece, subscriber Cal Clifford put a possible new perspective on he expression by mentioning egg-sucking dogs: “Occasionally, a trusted, working farm dog would develop the bad habit of taking eggs from nests and eating them, turning himself from asset into liability.” I found several examples of the term, including this from Glengarry School Days by Ralph Connor, dated 1902: “His chief business was the doing away with dogs of ill-repute in the country; vicious dogs, sheep-killing dogs, egg-sucking dogs, were committed to Alan’s dread custody, and often he would be seen leading off his wretched victims to his den in the woods, whence they never returned.” And in Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp, by Annie Roe Carr (of about 1919): “He’s a miserable, fox-faced scoundrel, and I’ve no more use for him than I have for an egg-sucking dog.” So it is just possible that the expression might be a figurative extension from that of a dog found with egg around its muzzle, mute evidence of depravity.
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.
937661
"As the crow flies" is a colloquial term used to describe the most direct route between two points on the Earth.\n\nThe term has nautical origins.  When lost or unsure of their position in coastal waters, ships would release a caged crow. The crow would fly straight towards the nearest land thus giving the vessel some sort of a navigational fix. The tallest lookout platform on a ship came to be know as the "crow's nest" for that reason.
1186088
I suspect it's supposed to be something like "Quod quondam iterum ego vado, in profundis vorago existimo iaci" which means something like "Whichever path I travel (in the past, in the future, sometimes), I judge myself to be thrown into a profound pit."\n\nIt didn't make much sense to me in the first version…I suspect it's a bad computer translation.
180606
It was originally cowboy jargon.  The person who had to ride behind the cattle herd when it was being driven to market was called the drag rider, and he was said to "eat dust" (a herd of cattle can stir up a respectable cloud of dust, visible for miles.)  When you were in a hurry and drove the animals too hard, without time enough to stop and graze and drink, the weaker ones collapsed, typically forward onto their knees.  They "bit the dust."
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."
750328
You actually missed some of that quote, the entire phrase as\n\n"Compared to watching my alcoholic family fighting over the last bottle of scotch, I don't really find I Love Lucy to be that funny"\n\nTaken in this context, it has a little more meaning behind it.
573348
Quote:\nIt suggests that a person’s brain is like a cracked pot, in other words that he or she is in some way deranged. Pot was once a slang term for the skull, and something cracked was obviously defective—a older expression with a similar meaning that used the same word was crack-brain, and of course we still have the slang term cracked for someone who’s thought to be crazy (a crackhead is something different, of course).\n\nCrackpot has been with us since the 1880s, though its first sense was that of a stupid person. The London humorous writer F Anstey (a pseudonym for Thomas Anstey Guthrie) recorded it in this sense in 1891 in a piece about short farces of the period that were performed in the more minor London music halls (I hope his attempt at recording the London dialect of the period is understandable): “Colonel Jinks’s ill-used son discovered the will, whereupon his ecstasy was quite lyrical. ‘What!’ he cried. ‘All that mine? Five thousand jimmy-oh goblets, five thousand good old golden sorcepin lids! [i.e. gold sovereigns] To think I’ve bin sech a bloomin’ crackpot all this time and never tumbled on it! I’ll be a gentleman now, and live in stoyle.’”\n\nWithin a few years, the term had moved to its modern sense of a person given to eccentric, senseless or lunatic notions.
319002
The above answer is correct except I always heard it differently. The last verse as I remember it is:\n\nDown came the good fairy who said\nYou've had three chances \nNow I'm going to turn you into a GOON!\n\nAnd the moral of this story is...\n\nHare today, goon tomorrow.
417427
Well, of course it was a band in the 80's.  "Shout" was huge the year I flew out for a three year tour to Germany.\n\nHow would someone come up with that phrase?  Psychologically speaking, and from the things I have studied, (I am winging it from here) I think it would have something to do with the manifestation of TEARS from the extreme frustration of FEARS that can not be controlled or overcome.\n\nHey, I said I was winging it.\nThen again, maybe it was just two words that rhymed.   LOL
234791
It means "ground into double play" - number of ground balls hit that became double plays.
893141
As happy as a sandboy is an expression which implies blissful contentment. I believe that the saying is truly Bristolian in origin. On Bathurst basin, in the City centre is the long established Ostrich Inn. The Inn is immediately adjacent to the Redcliff caves which, in their day, were a prime source of sand. Past landlords of the Inn used to send little boys ie Sandboys into the caves to collect sand to spread on the floor of the Inn to soak up the beer and ale droppings (much like butchers used to put sawdust on the floor of their shops). The Sandboys were paid for their efforts in beer.\n\n They were indeed happy.