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“food”

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16 matches

1. Double-double

   Meaning A coffee prepared with two servings of cream and two of sugar. Current informal food-and-drink term Regional use: Canada.

   Also known as double double

2. Eat, drink and be merry

   Meaning Enjoy food, drink, and present pleasures, sometimes because the future is uncertain. Can celebrate present enjoyment or criticize short-sighted self-indulgence; context decides. Regional use: Biblical…

   Also known as Let us eat, drink and be merry

3. Eat out of house and home

   Meaning To gobble all the food or drain a place.

   Also known as Eat out

4. Tuckered out

   Origin … that same year. It probably developed from tuck meaning food, appetite, or the energy supplied by eating: to tucker something out was to exhaust its store. The related take the tuck out of, meaning sap…

   Also known as all tuckered out · take the tuck out of · tucker out

5. Eat humble pie

   Origin … edible inner parts, of an animal, especially a deer. The food name is recorded in the seventeenth century. Because umble and humble sounded alike, humble pie later invited an association with humility…

6. High on the hog

   Origin … contrasts costlier pork chops and ham with cheaper food. This supports an association with desirable cuts from the upper part of a pig, although older uses of 'live high' also helped make the luxury sense…

   Also known as Eat high on the hog · High off the hog · Live high off the hog

7. Blow hot and cold

   Origin … a traveller blows on his hands to warm them and on his food to cool it, leading the satyr to distrust someone who blows hot and cold with the same mouth. The fable explains the metaphor, but it does not date…

   Also known as Blow both hot and cold · Blow hot and cold with the same breath · Run hot and cold

8. High muckety-muck

   Origin … filtered through Chinook Jargon. Muck-a-muck meant food or eating, probably from a Nuu-chah-nulth source, while hiyu meant much or plenty; English speakers reshaped hiyu as high. High muck-a-muck was applied…

   Also known as high muck-a-muck · high muckamuck · muck-a-muck · muckety-muck

9. Root, hog, or die

   Origin … turning hogs loose to forage: the animal had to root for food or starve. An Ohio newspaper called it a proverb in 1829, and Davy Crockett used it as an old saying in his 1834 autobiography. The line later…

   Also known as root hog or die · root, hog, or - die

10. Come the raw prawn

    Origin … unpalatable or hard to swallow, but the National Dictionary Centre does not identify a conclusive source event. It is therefore safer to retain the food metaphor without inventing a more specific story…

    Also known as Come the raw prawn with someone · Don't come the raw prawn · Try the raw-prawn act

11. Put your foot in it

    Origin … American verbal form. Older British sayings blamed spoiled food on a bishop who had 'put his foot in the pot,' but etymologists have not established a simple, direct line from that 16th-century tradition to…

    Also known as Foot in mouth · Put one's foot in it · Put one's foot in one's mouth · Put your foot in your mouth

12. Eat out of your hand

    Origin From 19th-century Britain, tied to animals; taming with food, slang by 1830s for sway. A 1840 'Punch' uses it for a charmed lass.

    Also known as Out of hand

13. An elegant sufficiency

    Origin … poem Spring in 1728, although there it was not about food. Research discussed by the British Library traces the polite table formula to about 1840, when elaborate responses to offers of more food became…

    Also known as An elegant sufficiency, and any more would be superfluity · Elegant sufficiency · I've had an elegant sufficiency

14. Not worth a hill of beans

    Origin From 19th-century America, tied to beans; lowly food, cheap as dirt; slang by 1860s for junk. A 1863 'New York Times' uses it for a failed crop.

    Also known as Hill of beans · Not worth beans

15. Fine words butter no parsnips

    Origin … Buttering vegetables was an ordinary act, making the point concrete: speech cannot perform the useful work. Related versions substitute fair or soft for fine and sometimes replace parsnips with other food…

    Also known as Fair words butter no parsnips · Fine words butter no fish · Soft words butter no parsnips

16. Man does not live by bread alone

    Origin … verb form, while secular use broadened bread from literal food to material provision generally. The shortened modern saying often omits the verse's second half but retains its contrast between bodily…

    Also known as Man cannot live by bread alone