Non-Fiction Article From Upfront on “The Fly in the Ointment"

            An idiom is a phrase that means something completely different from its literal meaning. We use idioms everyday without even noticing, for example: “riding shotgun” or “spill the beans” or “Achilles’ heel”, sound familiar? Of course it does. Have you ever wondered where all these idioms come from? How they were made? It all comes from real things from the past.

            The example I mentioned earlier about “riding shotgun” comes from the days of the Wild West. In the days of the Wild West traveling by stagecoach was dangerous because it could take hours, and sometimes, even days, to get from town to town and so bandits and Indians often carried out attacks or ambushes. For protection, an armed man would usually ride near the driver to serve protection. Nowadays, “riding shotgun” usually means riding in the front seat next to the driver.

            The second example I used was “spill the beans” which comes from ancient Greece, where people would give their vote by dropping an either black or white bean into a jar. If someone were to knock over the jar all the beans or votes would be exposed, the secret of the votes would be exposed. Today, we say “spill the beans” when we are trying to convince someone to tell their secret.

            The last example was “Achilles’ heel”. Achilles is one of the great heroes of ancient Greek mythology. When he was a baby his mother took him by the heel and dipped him into a river with special powers that made him immortal called the Styx. Years later Achilles was murdered in the Trojan War when an arrow stuck in the one heel where the water had not touched him. Nowadays the “Achilles heel” means a flaw or a weakness.

            All of this is a different way of showing what the past was like and what ways people would do things differently from us today. I found this really interesting when I first heard about how and where these phrases came from. There where many of these idioms that I was shocked to hear where they came from. These examples are only three of hundreds of other interesting idioms that exist. Try thinking of and idiom, look up its origin, and get your mind blown.