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

your stories send them to our American Stories.com they're some of our favorites

up next we continue with our recurring series about the curious origins of

everyday sayings the stories behind them here to join us again is Andrew Thompson as

he continues to share another slice

from his ultimate guide to understanding these mini mysteries, these many stories of our precious

English language. A nest egg is savings that are set aside for lady use which a person

tries to add to. And that phrase has been used from

as early as the 14th century in England. In those days before commercial factory chicken

farming, chickens would lay their eggs in nests in a coop. As a means of giving the chickens

hope and encouraging them to lay more eggs, farmers used to place a porcelain or china 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.

The expression then came to mean someone's financial savings by the late 1600s.

In the nick of time means without a second despair and it began in England in the middle ages at that time

during team games there'd be a tally man to keep score he would carry a tally stick and each time a team

scored he would carve a small nick or notch or groove into the stick if the winning nick was added

just before the end of the match, it was known as the

nick in time. The expression later became known as in the nick of time. 19 to the dozen means to be

going at a very fast pace and it originated in the Cornish copper and tin mines in the 18th century

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