Customer Reviews

Common Phrases: And Where They Come From

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I was assigned to review this book several years ago for a magazine and was so disappointed with its content that it still annoys me.

Some of the etymologies and explanations in the book are probably true, however, there are quite a few instances where Korach and Mordock are demonstrably wrong--enough, I felt, to doubt the credibility of the rest of the book.

Read the review from the School Library Journal. See where the reviewer mentions "disagreements" with other sources and how difficult it is to pin down etymologies? That's a very delicate way of saying Korach and Mordock's book contains a lot of poorly-researched entries and very dubious explanations.

Spend your money on a different etymology book. This one is simply not a reliable source.

This has been a great find. You don't actually "read" it so much as you look up expressions and phrases and sayings in the index and then read them to someone else. A terrific little volume to keep on your desk or even in the backpack. Lots of fun. I don't understand how I can be the first reviewer!

I've always been intrigued by common phrases, or idioms, that are part of our everyday language. As a result I was happy to get my hands on this book. After reading COMMON PHRASES: AND WHERE THEY CAME FROM I feel as if many of my questions have been answered.

In the introduction, almost as interesting as the body, Morduck and Korach explain the prevalance of idioms in addition to their historical and social significance. Now I realize how these common phrases maintain an important bond between the present and the past. Some of the idioms are so commonplace that I didn't realize their historical significance. Here is an example I found interesting,

"Apple of My Eye: It was believed as long ago as the ninth century that the pupil of the eye was a vital spot in the human anatomy. Primitive medical curiousity about it caused the early healers to study the pupil as closely as they could. They concluded that it was apple shaped, and so it become popularly known as 'apple of the eye.' Because the pupil was considered as vital as life itself, it become customary for a gallant hero to call the object of his affections 'the apple of my eye.'" (p. 16)

COMMON PHRASES: AND WHERE THEY COME FROM is well worth the money and time if you're as interested in idioms as I am.

This is a non-scholarly, non-academic collection of word origins compiled in the 1940s by a lawyer. Many of the expressions are out of date ("go to the dickens," "catch a tarter"). Explanations for many of the origins are simply speculative, with dubious support. Probably the greatest value for this book is as material for small talk or trivia questions. Save your money and check it out from a library.

I have always been fascinated by the origen of phrases and sayings, and my interest was piqued when I moved to a rural area and became a "gentleman farmer," and I discovered how many common phrases (like nest egg and bellwhether)have interesting rural origens.

In reading other reviewers' rave reviews, I was very excited to get this book. When I read it, however, I was very disappointed.

On the plus side, yes, the author does cover a lot of common phrases, and if you are reading purely for entertainment and don't expect to rely on the book as being factually accurate, you'll probably enjoy this book.

On the down side, it is, frankly, poorly written and edited. If I didn't have personal experience raising chickens and thus already understood what a nest egg really is, I probably wouldn't have really understood the author's explanation. The same goes for "dead as a doornail"--if I hadn't spoken with a carpenter, I would not have understood this author's explanation. It's clear to me that, for many of the entries, the author was repeating something he had heard without really understanding it himself, so the explanations are just not very good.

In addition, many (perhaps half) of the "common" phrases he lists are not common. In fact, there are many that I have never heard of at all, and checking with friends and relatives, none of them had ever heard of these phrases either. So the title of the book is misleading, in that many of the phrases are not only NOT common, but completely unheard-of.

Another very major problem I had with this book is that some explanations are just downright wrong, and you don't even have to know anything about the phrase to realize that the author is wrong. For example, he claims "flying off the handle" is when an axe slips out of one's hands and goes flying dangerously off. You don't need to have used an axe to realize that he has described "losing your grip," not "flying off the handle."

Flying off the handle is when the metal axeHEAD comes loose from the wooden handle and flies off. This can happen at any time in the up- or down- swing; it is thrown off at high speed due to being at the end of a stick; the person wielding the axe is not harmed by his actions; but the axehead is both highly dangerous and completely unpredictable in its direction, making any nearby innocent bystander a potential target. Hence, a person who suddenly and violently attacks someone else (verbally or otherwise), with no warning, is exactly analogous to an axehead that is "flying off the handle."

Again, I'm sure that many if not most of the people who read this book will find it enjoyable and interesting. Just be warned that the book is incomplete, of questionable writing quality, and contains a number of significant errors.

I found this book interesting but believe that in some cases the given derivation of, especially phrases, is either incomplete - there could be another one or two derivations - or inaccurate. A case in point is the phrase "Mind your Ps and Qs". Many a historian of handset print have said that it also refers to not confusing the lower case letters P and Q when setting type as they are backwards when viewed front on. I find the book "What We Say" by Webb Garrison to be more accurate in my opinion.

Common Phrases and Where They Come From by Myron Korach collects about 400 or so idioms - common expressions in our language that cannot be explained or understood literally. You might call them clich?s, or say "in a manner of speaking" after using one of them. I've always referred to them simply as expressions. But no matter what term you use, sayings like "down in the dumps" and "takes the cake" can only be understood intuitively by a native speaker of English, and even then, most of us are unaware of the origins and backstories behind them. That's where this book comes in.

Now as reference books go, CPAWTCF is terrible: less than 400 entries is very scanty, only the "tip of the iceberg" as far as colorful phrases of our language go; the organization is baffling to me, as it divides the idioms under chapter headings like Big Daddies, Scrapes and Toothbrush Day instead of alphabetically; and the text is conversational in tone rather than scholarly (whatever that means). But then again, the author denies that he meant to write this as a reference book so much as a *history* book. Quote, "to make aware of historical circumstances that produced today's brief, colorful phrases that convey powerful meanings" and "to illustrate the way our language is shaped by our past history and how this history influences our current communications" are the real agenda of CPAWTCF. Korach doesn't bother to include listings that don't further this, such as "top banana". I think that the storytelling feel of each entry, usually extended for at least two paragraphs each, serves this purpose well.

I might give CPAWTCF to somebody that has a mild interest in trivia, or history, or both. People who need a serious reference for clich?s and idioms would do better to look for Roger's Dictionary of Cliches (2,000 listings) or the Facts on File Dictionary of Cliches (4,000 listings). But for fun bathroom reading, Common Phrases can't be beat!
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

I was very disappointed in this book. Most of the phrases he choose to research were either uninteresting and obvious, or so obscure, I didn't really care about their origins.

We found the book loads of fun ... gave it to a wonedrful friend whid is an avid reader ... she loved it and refers to it often...

Ok, I can believe that alternative etymologies are out there for some stuff. Credibility is a touchy thing with this topic. That aside, I enjoy this book. As someone else send it is fun to have on the desk and refer to every once in awhile for a random kick.
The differing fonts are both cute and distracting.

Fun for mad money, as said earlier. I agree.