“Bring Home the Bacon” and the Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson shares another slice of his guide to understanding the baffling mini-mysteries of the English language, this time diving into how the phrase “bring home the bacon” came to be. His book, Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions and Fun Phrases, is a must-read. Be sure to check it out!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.5 | Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. What's up, y'all? It's Kadeen. And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Ever After podcast. This holiday season, tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family, love and marriage. |
| 0:23.8 | And everything else in between. |
| 0:25.8 | Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. |
| 0:29.9 | Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. |
| 0:50.0 | This is our American stories and we tell stories about everything here on this show. |
| 0:59.5 | And up next, author Andrew Thompson, here to share the stories behind curious phrases and everyday sayings. |
| 1:01.1 | Take it away, Andrew. |
| 1:05.2 | Blowing hot and cold means to change one's mind or be inconsistent. |
| 1:12.5 | And it derives from classical mythology and one of the fables of ASOP, the ancient Greek writer from 570 BC. |
| 1:18.4 | In it he tells the story of a man who meets a mythical beast who is part man and part goat on winter's day. When he meets the beast, the man blows on his hands to warm them up because |
| 1:23.5 | it's cold and the beast invites the man into his house to have some porridge. |
| 1:30.5 | But then the man blows on the porridge to cool it down. |
| 1:32.6 | The beast couldn't believe it and said, |
| 1:37.1 | Out you go, I will have naught to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath. |
| 1:40.7 | The expression was used figuratively by the 17th century when the English churchman William Chilling, referred to it in a book he wrote in 1638. |
| 1:47.6 | The expression, Blue Blood, means a member of a socially prominent or wealthy family. |
| 1:53.8 | And it's a translation of the Spanish phrase Sangre Azou, which relates to aristocrats who lived in Castile. |
| 2:01.4 | In the 18th century, the Moors invaded Castile from northern Africa and they had dark skin. |
| 2:07.3 | Many interracial marriages took place, but the oldest and proudest families from Castile |
| 2:11.8 | were quick to boast that they had never intermarried with the Moors or any other race. |
... |
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