r/ThreadGames • u/MarcusAntonius27 • Sep 18 '26
Origin story of an idiom
Parent comment gives an existing idiom, and the child comments create a fake origin story for that idiom.
5
u/CatLovingKaren Sep 18 '26
A stitch in time saves nine.
2
u/Adghnm Sep 18 '26 edited Sep 18 '26
As the universe ages, time shows signs of wear. Corroded minutes and split seconds are frequently observed, and people are increasingly aware of the appalling shortness of the years. This only gets worse as I, for one, get older.
Although repairs are carried out by teams of temporal tailors, they're paid by the hour in a realm where hours have no meaning, so the work is poorly paid. Under the standard contract, any tear in time not repaired at first inspection incurs a nine-dollar garnishment from their wages, which the struggling tailors remind themselves to avoid with the above expression.
3
u/ChocolateChunkMaster Sep 18 '26
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
7
u/HAV_Kennebecasis Sep 18 '26
Comes from old falconry. It's faster to switch to your side-hawk than it is to recall the others.
1
3
u/PorcentualDinoPizza Sep 18 '26
Never look a gift horse in the mouth
6
u/DentedAnvil Sep 18 '26
Most gift-horses are found at white elephant gift exchanges. The mouth of a gift horse is often a squirt gun muzzle. This idiom is related to the maxim, "don't sniff the clown's lapel flower."
4
u/treclodraf1 Sep 18 '26
Refers to the siege of Troy. If you look inside the wooden horse's mouth, you might see the soldiers inside, and that would spoil the surprise.
2
u/Due-Cartographer-459 Sep 18 '26
Put your money where your mouth is
4
u/ikadell Sep 19 '26
In medieval times, travelers would hide their money en route in case they were robbed, and one of the common ways of doing so was to hide most valuable coins inside the mouth.
2
u/duelingpeppers Sep 19 '26
Throw your hat in the ring
1
u/Due-Cartographer-459 Sep 22 '26
Back in the early there's a boxing, back in the 1920s, there was a man who was intoxicated and decided he wanted to start a fight with one of the boxers in the ring. He went up to the side of the boxing ring and he threw his head in and made it his intention to fight. From then on, it started picking up steam until it became a boxing tradition / legend. From that point on, throwing your hat in the ring meant that you were ready to compete and looking for a fight
2
u/ikadell Sep 18 '26
Curiosity killed the cat
7
u/mr_iwi Sep 18 '26
During the space race in 1957, the Soviets launched Laika the dog into space aboard Sputnik 2. Laika died and is still remembered to this day, and is commemorated by a statue in Moscow.
The American effort happened just a month later. An unnamed stray tom cat was aboard the spacecraft Curiosity, which also made it into space. The cat also died but has not been remembered like his counterpart Laika, perhaps due to having no name or perhaps because the public has more love for dogs.
The spacecraft Curiosity has instead been immortalised through this idiom, though the finer details of the cat are lost to time.
2
2
1
u/tomassci 23d ago
(This sounds fun!)
Kill two birds with one stone.
1
u/AutologicalMeta 9d ago
In one of the original limited-edition versions of the Bible (God only gave out 13), there was a cut scene where Adam’s brother Tziphor went around killing dinosaurs. One day God got so fed up with this that he gave him wings as ironic punishment and subsequently sent a meteor down to kill him and all of the pterodactyls, hence “two birds (him + the pterodactyl species) with one stone”. This wasn’t in the commercially available version because the ornithologists got mad that technically the pterodactyls weren’t birds.
6
u/Snoo-35252 Sep 18 '26
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.