Everybody knows what it means. Almost nobody can tell you where it came from...and that turns out to be the whole story. #OnTheBackBurner #Etymology #WordOrigins On this episode of Appraise The Phrase, Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "on the back burner," the youngest phrase this show has ever appraised. Before gas, American stoves didn't have…

Everybody pictures a locomotive. Everybody is wrong. On this episode of Appraise The Phrase, Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "train of thought" — a phrase that shows up in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in 1651 and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690, roughly 165 years before locomotives existed. The railroad imagery in your head?…

"Help! I'm in a nutshell!" — Austin Powers already knew this phrase was funnier taken literally. We trace "in a nutshell" back almost 2,000 years to a claim that might just be one of history's oldest fake news stories. #Etymology #WordOrigins #InANutshell #Shakespeare Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "in a nutshell." The trail starts with a wild…

Where does "wet my beak" actually come from? We trace it from a 19th-century Sicilian grain custom to The Godfather — and yes, we get into He Got Game too. #AppraiseThePhrase #Etymology #WordOrigins #WetMyBeak #TheGodfather Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "wet my beak." The trail starts in 19th-century rural Sicily, where grain farmers were…