Black Humour
Meaning: Black humour or black comedy is a style of writing where the author highlights serious issues through comedy.
History: The term comes from the French l’humour noire and was coined by Andre Breton around 1940. This phrase was first used in English in 1965. Dark humour and dark comedy refer to an extreme kind of satire.
The concept of presenting serious issues through comedy has been around for a very long time – only the phrase labelling it is relatively new. A famous example of black comedy is in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, published in 1729. [Jonathan Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels too]. In the book, Swift made outlandish statements like “the British should eat Irish babies.”
These statements brought attention to the problem of Irish poverty. The colour black was a natural choice for this idiom because of the horror involved in both the fiction (eating babies) and the reality (starvation).
A bolt from the blue/ out of the blue
Meaning: A complete surprise, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.
History: The earliest use of this phrase was in Thomas Carlyle’s book “The French Revolution”, published in 1837: “Arrestment sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims.”
It is possible that the English version of this expression came from the work of the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace. Carlyle probably read Horace’s “Odes”.
Red-Handed
Meaning: Caught in the act of a crime, as in “The thief was caught red-handed when burgling the shop.”
History: The use of the colour red in the phrase comes from the colour of blood. There was blood on a murderers hand when he was caught in the act, so he was caught red-handed. Now it extends to all crimes. Scottish legal papers began to use the word “red-hand” in 1432. The phrase “red-handed” was first seen in print in 1819, when Sir Walter Scott used it in his novel “Ivanhoe”. The hyphenated word became instantly popular.
Yellow Journalism
Meaning: Sensational journalism. It was a form of reporting that was extremely popular in the late 19th century. In yellow journalism, facts are exaggerated and unverified details are added, to make the report “interesting” for the readers.
History: In the final years of the 19th century, there was acute rivalry between newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the “New York World”, and William Randolph Hearst, owner of the “Journal”. Each wanted to outdo the other in the sale of his newspaper and tried many methods to do this.
“New York World” published a popular cartoon that featured a character called the Yellow Kid, and the cartoon increased sales tremendously. The Journal at once lured the artist with better pay to work for them. And this started a “We’ll pay you more war. In the meantime, the papers increased circulation by reporting on the Cuban struggle for independence, and both didn’t hesitate to bend the truth to catch the readers’ attention.
Rose-Coloured Glasses
Meaning: Being optimistic as in “in spite of his failures he has learnt the art of seeing the world through rose coloured/rose-tinted glasses.” It means he is hopeful that things will change for the better. The phrase has been in use since the 16th century. However, Merriam-Webster.com dates this idiom to 1926.
History: Why should the world be “rosy” (and not green, yellow or maroon?) when you have a positive attitude? One theory is from the Victorian times when it was believed that an artist could improve a painting by adding extra roses to it. The second theory is that early mapmakers wiped their glasses with rose petals to keep them clean so they could put in minute details in their maps. Maps, in those days, were drawn by hand. A third theory is even more interesting in the early 1900s, some farmers stuck rose coloured glasses (goggles) on their chickens so that they would not eat other chickens. The farmers believed that the glasses would prevent the chickens from recognising blood on other chickens, Blood made them attack those chickens. Were the fanners being overly optimistic?
Blue blood
Meaning: The blood which is supposed to flow in the veins of old and aristocratic families
History: The phrase comes from the Spanish “sangre azul.” Some old families in Castile in Spain said they had “pure” blood since they never married outsiders. Why “blue”? Probably because the veins of people who were very fair stood out in blue against their skin.
In 1834, this is what the Anglo-Irish children’s writer Maria Edgeworth wrote in her novel “Helen.”
“[Someone] from Spain, of high rank and birth, of the sangre azul the blue blood.” Today, a blue spot on your skin means you have knocked that part of the body against an object (for instance, your thigh against a table)
If your toes or fingertips are blue it may be because you have stayed out in the cold for too long. It shows poor blood circulation.
Baby blues
Meaning: Feelings of depression or anxiety, experienced by some mothers following childbirth.
History: Before World War II, the term “baby blue” simply meant a colour. If someone said, “Look, that’s baby blue the listener would have thought he was talking about eye colour. A lot of babies are born with blue eyes because of a lack of a pigment called melanin. But this gets corrected when they grow a little older.
In the 1940s, people began to use the term “baby blues to mean the depression some mothers suffered after childbirth. In his best-selling baby-care book “Expectant Motherhood”, in 1940, Nicholson J. Eastman wrote: “Most common among such reactions, perhaps is what is colloquially called the Baby Blues.
Tickled Pink
Meaning: This is an idiom meaning “delighted”.
History: The phrase came into use in 1922. It comes from the observation that your complexion becomes flushed and pinkish when you are tickled. If you are tickling someone, be careful not to hurt them. Then their face will go all red with anger! Laughing when being tickled is an automatic response.
Picture Credit : Google
