This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories.

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There's some of our favorites.

And up next, we continue with our recurring series about the curious origins of everyday sayings.

Here to join us again is Andrew Thompson as he continues to share another slice from his ultimate guide to understanding these many mysteries

of the English language. In a nutshell means concisely or in a few words, you might say to someone,

just tell me in a nutshell. And it's said to originate from the ancient story described in 17 AD by the Roman scholar Pliny the elder.

The story goes that the philosopher Cicero witnessed a copy of Homer's epic poem, The Iliad,

written onto a piece of parchment and enclosed into the shell of a walnut.

Obviously this is impossible, but it is believed that important documents were folded

and inserted into walnut shells and bound

so that they were waterproof and could be taken long distances

without damaging them.

Shakespeare referred to the expression in his 1603 play Hamlet

and that immortalised the expression. Inner shambles means a state of complete

disorder or ruin and it derives from the open-air meat sellers of medieval times. The word

shambles derives from the old English word meaning footstool which came from the Latin word meaning

small bench. Most towns at that time in England had streets

designated to a single type of vendor. There were streets for grocers, streets were breadsellers,

butchers who all offered their wares from streetside work benches. These streets were known as

shambles but it was the butchers that became particularly associated with the term.

As they were supplied directly by the slaughterhouses, the meat shambles were renowned for being a complete mess of blood and off-cuts.

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