Nemo 5's Comments

Others have already pointed out some errors; here are some more.

"In hock" does not come from the game faro, but from a Dutch word, hok, which was a slang word for prison, and by extension, debt.

"Botch" has nothing to do with chairs per se. It comes from a Middle English word, bocchen, meaning "to mend/patch" (and later "to do a job in patchwork fashion").

"Beat the rap" is indeed American, and dates to 1865, but "rap" was used by itself to refer to a *false* charge; so the explanation here has things precisely the wrong way around.

Given that the earliest attested uses of the expression "paint the town red" come from New York and Boston in the 1880s (not from Melton Mowbray, sorry, though U.K. English did pick it up pretty quickly), there are no grounds for the explanation given here. (And there is *certainly* no connection with Roman practices, and calling people "tard" isn't going to persuade them otherwise.)

Others, however, about which people here have expressed doubts, are correct -- such "stumped" and "pig in a poke".
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  • Member Since 2012/08/18


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