American sports have also contributed: ballpark figure (estimate), play hardball (act ruthlessly) and slam dunk (categorical victory).To move the goalposts (change the rules or requirements mid process), comes from football.So, where do our modern idioms come from? “We have a much clearer idea of when they were first used and we can track that with much more accuracy, simply because we have such good records of everything these days.” “This is one of the interesting things about the modern idioms,” says Gareth. If we go back 500 years or so, we know phrases like kick the bucket were common parlance, but we can’t necessarily nail down their provenance. The answer? Native Americans would literally bury their weapons at the end of a conflict.Īnd with lots of idioms, no one is actually certain where they came from. We all know it means "to make peace”, but most of us won’t know why. A good example might be bury the hatchet. Often, they reflect iconic or symbolic actions that are no longer common knowledge. It can be really difficult to find the root of famous idioms. With modern idioms, finding their origin is easier
“The sort of fixed nature of idioms is really important,” says the psycholinguist. We can’t change it to play with acid, for example. Idioms are different because they are fixed phrases, Gareth explains: “They’re lexically specific combinations of words that we can’t really change.” For example, with the idiom play with fire, the “fire” is metaphorical – it stands for something risky or dangerous – but it’s part of a specific phrase.
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