CLASSIC: Idiomatic for the People II, Part I: What's in a word?

Ridiculous History

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History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Language is beautiful and, in many cases, continually evolving. As a result, we end up with hundreds of strange idioms and figures of speech that we use on a daily basis, with little to no understanding of what they originally meant. Join the guys with special guests Frank Mulherin and Rowan Newbie, the creator of the Pitches podcast, as they explore the bizarre origins of your favorite turns of phrase in this week's Classic episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Fellow ridiculous historians, we are returning to you with a classic, a series of classics, actually.
0:07.0	So stay tuned.
0:08.2	This is one that we immensely enjoyed.
0:13.6	And, Noel, if you recall, we broke in some friends for this.
0:17.5	We did.
0:18.0	It's another example of what we intended to be an
0:22.5	ongoing series in the early days of the
0:24.7	show, and we only did twice.
0:27.4	We had the best of
0:28.6	intentions, and now that I'm remembering
0:30.3	what a good time we had
0:32.1	with friends of the show, Frank Mulherin
0:34.3	and Rowan Newby,
0:35.8	I think we got to do this again.
0:38.9	Idiomatic for the people.
0:40.6	This idea of each guest, we could do a guest list if needed, bring a word and just trace
0:46.2	the origins of it.
0:47.3	We love etymology and history of words, and it's bonkers to me that we have not revisited
0:53.6	this.
0:54.3	It's also a really clever name and a reference to hometown heroes, REM.
0:58.4	Oh, we must.
1:00.1	Let's roll the tape.
	...

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