EP132: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions, From Fired High School Dropout... To Owning D.C.'s Best Taco Chain! and Why it Took One Man 7 Years to get his Car Back
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2021
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson tells us about the origin of phrases in the English language; Osiris Hoil tells the story of when he lost his construction job in 2008, but through his fantastic cooking he started District Taco, D.C.'s best taco chain; and Montey Montgomery tells the story of how Tyson Timbs found out that old habits do indeed die hard when he was arrested and convicted for selling drugs to undercover cops. He also found out what asset forfeiture was when the State of Indiana took his Land Rover and held onto it for 7 years.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions
08:00 - From Fired High School Dropout... To Owning D.C.'s Best Taco Chain!
27:30 - Why it Took One Man 7 Years to get his Car Back
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, |
| 0:16.7 | including your stories, send them to Our American Stories.com. |
| 0:20.5 | There's some of our favorites. Up next, we them to our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:21.9 | Up next, we continue with our recurring series about the curious origins of everyday sayings, |
| 0:28.0 | the stories behind them. |
| 0:29.7 | Here to join us again is Andrew Thompson as he continues to share another slice |
| 0:34.6 | from his ultimate guide to understanding these mini mysteries, these |
| 0:38.9 | many stories of our precious English language. |
| 0:42.3 | A nest egg is savings that are set aside for later use, which a person tries to add |
| 0:48.3 | to. |
| 0:49.3 | And that phrase has been used from as early as the 14th century in England. |
| 0:53.3 | In those days before commercial |
| 0:55.0 | factory chicken farming, chickens would lay their eggs in nests in a coop. As a means of giving |
| 1:00.4 | the chickens hope and encouraging them to lay more eggs, farmers used to place a porcelain or china |
| 1:05.5 | egg in the nest or the coop area. The dummy egg was known as a nest egg and did often induce the chickens to be more productive. |
| 1:12.6 | The expression then came to mean someone's financial savings by the late 1600s. |
| 1:18.6 | In the nick of time means without a second to spare and it began in England in the Middle Ages. |
| 1:24.6 | At that time during team games there'd be a tally man |
| 1:28.5 | to keep score. He would carry a tally stick and each time a team scored he would carve |
| 1:33.8 | a small nick or notch or groove into the stick. If the winning nick was added just before |
| 1:38.8 | the end of the match it was known as the nick in time. The expression later became known as in the nick of time. |
| 1:47.6 | 19 to the dozen means to be going at a very fast pace and it originated in the Cornish copper and tin |
... |
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