Unique Word Origins: How Another 6 Popular English Idioms Came to Be
From ancient Rome to modern golf, these sayings run the gamut
In my first Unique Word Origins post, I described idioms as groups of words that are used as common expressions. While these expressions are generally understood by speakers of a certain language who have lived for some time in a certain culture, they can leave others scratching their heads. In the U.S., the origins of many popular sayings are generally understood, especially if they’re literal as in “neat as a pin,” but others’ meanings are less obvious or well known. Personally, I include the following idioms in that intriguing group.
Burning/ringing ears
I’d always heard that when your ears were ringing, it meant someone was talking about you. What I’d never heard, though, was that this saying dates back to Roman times, and the specific ear experiencing a tingling or burning sensation makes a difference. The even older superstition that good sits on the right of something (or someone) and evil on the left led Romans to believe that if a person’s right ear was ringing or burning, they were being praised by someone, but if such a sensation was felt in the left ear, someone was not only speaking poorly of that person but probably planning to do something evil to…
