Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pyjamas
Popular Expressions - What They Mean and Where We Got Them.
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Average rating2.5
How on earth did 'with bells on' come to express enthusiasm? And what do chips on shoulders have to do with inferiority complexes? Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pyjamas provides us with the meanings of these well-worn and much-loved phrases by putting these linguistic quirks in context, and explaining how and why they were first used.
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Pretty dry and boring which would be fine if it was also informative, but the explanations are very brief and often incomplete. There's also no references, so I'd take anything in there “with a grain of salt” (little joke for you). A lot of entries tell you where it was first recorded, but don't give the origin or reason for it becoming a saying, i.e.: the actually interesting part. For example, “clean round the bend” is apparently a naval term and was also used to advertise toilet cleaner, but I still have no idea why it means mad.
