A friend of mine – I’ll call him Max – recently had a disagreement with his sister, and he was agonizing to me about it and how to mend things. When he was brainstorming how to get her to talk to him Max said, “maybe I ought to go with an olive branch in hand”. I asked him how he thought that would work and he said, “It’s a goodwill gesture – a symbol of peace – and if she throws it back at me I’ll know the timing is wrong!” Max’s use of the expression inspired me to consider its derivation,…

When it comes to some interpersonal conflicts the expression let sleeping dogs lie may be used to mean “to leave things as they are; especially, to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument; to leave disagreements in the past”. Certainly a sleeping dog is a lovely sight. But to me so are most dogs who are awake. Presumably the image of this metaphor is meant to conjure up excessive yapping and…

When we accuse someone of upsetting the applecart we generally think that person is causing trouble and creating difficulties by doing or saying something that challenges the status quo. Of the four variations of the source of the expression that I read about, the most basic and generic derivation refers to farmers in the 1800s who would bring applecarts loaded with neatly piled,…

Many years ago I had a friend who made fun of certain words and expressions we commonly use. For instance, she would ask who are “they” who make up rules about what is acceptable behaviour or wise advice like, “They say don’t swim after you eat”, or “They say if you tell the truth it becomes a part of your past. If you lie it becomes part of your future”. (I am not attributing these expressions as I am not able to find their derivation. They are time-worn statements I have heard as long as I…