Idiom of the Week—“Warm the Cockles of your Heart”

Well, after taking some heat from Rob Newman for last week’s “lame” idiom, I am feeling a lot of pressure to come through with something especially witty today.  So here goes:

An inspirational story or nostalgic movie is often said to "warm the cockles of your heart", but where exactly are the cockles of your heart located?  The cockles of your heart are more metaphorical than physical, although the phrase can be traced back to 15th century medical beliefs. Unfortunately, the etymological path gets a little murky after that.

Under one popular theory, the phrase "cockles of your heart" is derived from the Latin description for the heart's chambers, cochleae cordis. It is believed that the word 'cockles' is a corrupted version of cochleae, most likely entering the popular vernacular as a form of slang.  The prevailing medical opinion of that day and time was that the ventricles of the human heart resembled the concentric shells of small mollusks or snails, also known as cochleae or cockles.

Another theory concerning the "cockles of your heart" dates back to the Middle Ages.  During this time, there were an abundance of small mollusks and snails whose shells were vaguely heart-shaped. In the old Irish folk song "Molly Malone," a reference is made to these edible mollusks as "cockles and mussels." It is possible that the shape of these cockle shells inspired a comparison to the chambers of the human heart. This theory sounds plausible, but the Latin root for the mollusks and the Latin root for the heart are not similar. If the phrase "cockles of your heart" did come from a comparison to mollusk shells, then it may have been a form of slang all along.

One final possibility of the origin of "warm the cockles of your heart" may be an alternative definition of "cockles." Some say the chambers of a kiln were called cockles, although that usage has apparently fallen out of common use. Under this theory, the cockles of your heart are analogous to the cold chambers of a kiln, which must be warmed to a certain temperature in order to function at its best. It could be argued that a nostalgic movie or other life-affirming experience warms the cockles of your heart in the same sense that a fire warms the "cockles" of a kiln.

There is even a theory that the French word for shell, coquille, is so close in pronunciation and meaning to "cockle" that a comparison to the shell-like chambers of the human heart was inevitable. Using foreign words in casual conversation is an age-old practice in any language, and it is possible that the phrase "cockles of your heart" may have evolved from the more affected "coquilles of your heart."

Idiom of the Week—“Kick the Bucket”

 Idiom of the Week—“Kick the Bucket”

This is a pretty common idiom, so it’s hard to believe we haven’t addressed it yet.  But I went back and checked the archives, and we haven’t explained “kick the bucket” yet, so here we go.  To “kick the bucket” means to die, and was the inspiration behind the title of the recent movie “The Bucket List”, which refers to a list of things you want to accomplish in your lifetime before you die (or, “kick the bucket”).

The link between buckets and death was made as early as 1785, when the phrase was defined in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as:  "To kick the bucket, to die."  As we have found with a lot of idioms, there are multiple theories as to the origin of “kick the bucket”.  Here are the two most popular:

1.        The Suicide/Execution Theory

One theory is that the phrase originates from the notion that people hanged themselves (or were hanged by a mob or posse) by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kicking the bucket away (or having it kicked away by someone else). There are no citations that relate the phrase to suicide and, in any case, why a bucket instead of, say, a chair or a crate or a rock?  This theory, although popular doesn't have a lot of evidence to support it.

2.       The Butcher Theory

         This theory has a little more historical credibility.  It seems that in 16th century England, the word “bucket” had an additional meaning (and in some parts of England, still carries this meaning.  The work “bucket” was used to refer to a beam or yoke used to hang or carry items. The term may have been introduced into English from either the French “trébuchet“, meaning a balance, or “buque“, meaning a yoke.  Many of you are probably thinking right now, “Wait a minute.  Didn’t Shakespeare use the term ‘bucket’ in reference to a yoke in his play Henry IV Part II, in 1597?”  Well, as a matter of fact he did.  Here’s the citation:  "Swifter then he that gibbets (or hangs) on the Brewers Bucket."  Over time, the wooden frame (or yoke) that was used to hang animals up by their feet for slaughter came to be called a bucket.  As you can imagine this was a rather messy affair, and it was not unusual for the animals to put up a struggle during the process.  In fact, it was pretty common for the animals to undergo a violent spasm after death and quite literally 'kick the bucket'.  It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this phrase could make the leap from being applied to slaughtered animals to being applied to expired human beings.

Idiom of the Week—How did the symbol“$” come to mean “dollars” (and, coincidentally, why is 25 cents sometimes called “Two bits”)?

      Those of you who remember typing on an actual typewriter may recall that the dollar sign originally had two vertical lines through it, not one (as in the symbol shown above).  Not surprisingly, there are multiple theories as to how this symbol came about.  Here they are for your consideration:

1.       The United States Abbreviation Theory

One of the most popular theories is that the dollar sign is derived from the initials of the United States. If you superimpose a capital "U" on a capital "S" then drop the lower part of the "U", what you end up with is a version of the dollar symbol with two strokes. This theory was endorsed by the American libertarian philosopher and staunch defender of capitalism, Ayn Rand, in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Chapter 10 is entitled the Sign of the Dollar. Rand claimed the dollar sign was the symbol not only of the currency, but also the nation, a free economy, and a free mind.

2.       The Peso Abbreviation Theory

A more widely accepted theory nowadays is that the sign owes its origins to the Spanish peso.  One version of this theory is that the standard abbreviation of "peso" was simply "P", but the plural form was a large "P" with a small "s" above it and to its right. This was simplified by retaining only the upward stroke of the "P" and superimposing the "S" upon it. Hence the symbol of the dollar.  But if the peso abbreviation theory is the correct one why is the US dollar sign sometimes written with two vertical strokes? A possible explanation is that the best known Spanish Peso coin had two pillars engraved on the reverse side to symbolize the "Pillars of Hercules" at Gibraltar and the words "Plus Ultra" indicating that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there were other lands. That coin was called the Pillar Dollar in the British colonies in North America and the two pillars may have become the two strokes in the Dollar sign.

3.       The Piece of Eight Theory

There is another version of the theory linking the sign to the Spanish peso. The peso was subdivided into eight smaller units of currency called “reals”, hence the name piece of eight. This was represented as P8 or /8/. Eventually it became customary to write the oblique strokes across the figure 8. In the past precious metal coins were sometimes split into pieces to provide small change. The use in America of the expression two bits for 25 cents is a legacy of this since if a Spanish dollar or peso or piece of eight was split into quarters each part would consist of two pieces (or “two bits”) of the original eight pieces (or “reals”).  The 8 with two strokes became a letter S with two strokes since S looks like an 8 that has been split, as when a peso was broken to provide change in reals. Eventually a further simplification was introduced by dropping one of the strokes.

Idiom of the Week—“Keep Your Nose to the Grindstone”

To “keep your nose to the grindstone” means to apply yourself conscientiously to your work.  There are two rival explanations as to the origin of this phrase. One is that it comes from the supposed habit of millers who checked that the stones used for grinding cereal weren't overheating by putting their nose to the stone in order to smell any burning. The other is that it comes from the practice of knife grinders when sharpening blades to bend over the stone, or even to lie flat on their fronts, with their faces near the grindstone in order to hold the blades against the stone.  All the evidence is against the miller's tale, most because the stones used by millers were commonly called millstones, not grindstones. The two terms were sometimes interchanged but the distinction between the two was made at least as early as 1400. 

The first known use of this phrase in print occurred in 1532 in an obscure work by John Frith:

"This Text holdeth their noses so hard to the grindstone, that it clean disfigureth their faces."

The phrase appears in print at various dates since the 16th century. It was well-enough known in rural USA in the early 20th century for this picture, taken from around 1910, which alludes to the 'holding someone's nose to the grindstone' version of the phrase, to have been staged as a joke.