This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything

here on this show.

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.

It's a Funny All World is an expression indicating an acceptance of or resignation to a situation.

And it was first used in the 1934 comedy film, You're Telling Me.

That film starred W.C. Fields, and at one point he says, it's a funny old

world. A man is lucky if he gets out alive. The popularity of Fields quickly made the expression

commonplace and it's been quoted ever since, most notably by the British Prime Minister Margaret

Thatcher after her decision to quit politics in 1990.

Alluding to the fact that she'd never lost an election in her life, yet had been forced to stand down, she said,

It's a funny old world, isn't it?

It's all Greek to me means unable to understand something or something doesn't make sense.

And it originates from the medieval Latin

proverb, which means it is Greek, it cannot be read. The phrase was used by monk's scribes at the time

as they copied manuscripts in monastic libraries. Knowledge of the Greek language was dwindling

and very few people could read it. The expression is yet another one that was brought into widespread usage by Shakespeare

in his 1599 played Julius Caesar, which contains the line,

but for my own part it was Greek to me.

The expression John Hancock, to mean a signature,

derives from the famous American merchant and statesman who lived from 1737 to 1793. He was governor of Massachusetts and president of the

Second Continental Congress, and he was one of the men, obviously, who signed the American

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