111 Idioms and Phrases and Their Fascinating Origins Paperback – August 11, 2023

Within the first page, I knew I loved this book. For real, I am a collector of random and not always useful information. I love learning so much! Can I apply this to my everyday life... well... no, not usually. But I'll tell you what, I'm one hell of an interesting conversationalist and this book is full of little pieces of information that are great conversation starters/add-ons! 😁

I was sent this by the author for a review so I want to say that upfront.As someone on the autism spectrum, it can be tempting many times to take people literalistically. Idioms if they are not known can be confusing. As someone in ministry, I also realize that many of the sayings in my community can be disastrous if taken that way. However, language is something amusing to me as a result and if I'm offered a free book explaining origins of terms, I will take it.Generally, when I go through a work like this, I also start listing the positives and then things I would improve on in later editions.The positives is that this book is easy to read. The chapters are all short and you don't have to go through them in any order. If you want to just go through and look at the selected idioms that you are interested in, you can do that.The chapters also usually include a little artistic sketch that has been done. It was somewhat reminiscent of the old clipart that we used to see on computers. This does indicate some extra effort on the part of the author to please his audience.Third, the book is family-friendly. You can read this with your kids and you won't have any profanity showing up or any talk about anything sexual.Finally, as a seminary student, I was pleased that when terms came up that could be from the Bible, that that was treated respectfully too. The way the Bible has impacted our language is always fascinating.So things I would like changed.Only one item in content I thought was odd and that was with the idiom on going the extra mile. I could not understand why the author pointed to the Good Samaritan when Matthew 5:41 explicitly refers to going the extra mile.However, the biggest change I would make is I would list where the information was found. The author says that some people say this idiom comes from XYZ. If we could even at least have links to where the author got all his information, that would be a phenomenal change that would greatly enhance the reader's trust in the information and their own launch into looking at idioms themselves. In a second edition or future books on idioms, please let this be included.So yeah, if you want to get a book on idioms, this is a fun little one to get. It won't exhaust your time and you can go at your own pace.

Do you keep your ear to the ground and an ace up your sleeve? You might need to bite your tongue rather than blow your own trumpet. Do not chicken out and call it a day, but try not to drive someone up the wall. You have probably used these phrases and many more like them many times. Maybe you have wondered where they came from, or maybe you have never thought about it, but in either case I predict you will enjoy author Louis Richards’ exploration of the origins of 111 common phrases . Despite his light tone, Richards has definitely done his homework and provides some very informative answers about their origins and first usage.This is not a book you have to read at one time, but it is a great resource to pick up when you have a little bit of time and want a diversion that is not a waste of time or if you want to look up a specific term. You can impress your friends with your erudition the next time one of them uses one of the phrases.PS I must disagree with the author in one respect, though. He opens the Introduction by saying , “You can’t judge a book by its cover”. In his case, I must beg to disagree. The cat on the cover who has “got your tongue” sets the perfect tone for potential readers!

I love learning the origin of common phrases and this book is exactly that! It's full of phrases I've never heard before and ones that I already use on a regular basis.

First of all and for the sake of transparency, I'd like to say I came upon this book as part of a survey task on an online side gig platform, and this review is part of that. That aside, the first thing I noticed was that the format of what would be the table of contents was a bit crowded when reading the book on my Kindle, but I appreciate the fact that it's more of an interactive list to get to the idioms one may be interested in the most, as stated later in the introduction. There is the rare typo, but all in all, the book is succint, clear and easy to read. It provides the gist on different idioms as far as their origin, along with explaining their usage and/or meaning. The illustrations are a nice touch. It's definitely a good book to get or gift when wanting to know more about where many idioms most likely come from, and in a straightforward way.

This book was more interesting than I had thought it would be. All the saying you hear growing up, for example birds of a feather flock together, are explained where they came from.

I love learning new things, and this book was a great way to do it. It was fun to read about the origins of everyday phrases and sayings. Definitely recommend!

This book is full of short easy to read blurbs about weird sayings we use in the English language. Each one gives a quick run down of what it means and then when it was first used and why. I have looked up so many of these out of curiosity when discussing them with my partner, it's nice to have a compilation!