Color me stupid

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Today’s expression is Color me stupid. Or, as we Canadians would spell it – Colour me stupid. :)

Someone used this expression today and I’d never heard it before, so I had to look it up.

Explanation: If someone says “Color me stupid”, it means they’ve done something foolish – you can “color” or call them stupid.

Example: After responding to the question “What is 2 plus 2″ with the answer “5″, Jessie felt embarassed and said “Well, color me stupid”.

Origin: No specific information available on when this originated. It seems to be an extension of other expressions such as “Color me confused” or “Color me pink”. Using color as a verb goes back as far as the 14th century, but these kinds of expressions seems to have come into being in the 1960s.

In spades

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Today’s expression is “In spades”

Explanation:  If you say someone has something “In spades”, you mean that they have a lot of something.

Example: Dan was an incredibly conceited guy. He had confidence in spades.

Origin: The origin of this one seems to come from the game Bridge. In Bridge, spades is the highest suit of cards, so if you were “in spades” you had the potential for a lot of points. The more generic meaning, simply to have a lot of something came along in the 1920s or 30s.

Penny wise and pound foolish

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Today’s phrase is penny wise and pound foolish.

I realize I just did bad penny earlier in the week, but with the announcement that Canada is phasing out its penny, I figured I might as well stick in another one!

Explanation: If you say someone is penny wise and pound foolish, you mean that they are careful with small expenses, but very careless with large ones.

Example: Becca was excellent at buying on sale groceries and using coupons, yet she would spend thousands of dollars while on vacation that she could not afford.

Origin: I found a couple of different answers on this one:

One credited to The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes’ where Edward Topsell wrote: ‘If by covetousnesse or negligence, one withdraw from them their ordinary foode, he shall be penny wise, and pound foolish.
 - Another credited it to English scholar Robert Burton’s Junior to the Reader

In spite of the fact that we use dollars in Canada (as does the U.S.) I have to admit I’ve never heard this expression as “penny wise and dollar foolish”. I think it’s the alliteration that keeps it catchy.

Bad penny

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Today’s phrase is bad penny.

Explanation: If you say something or someone is a bad penny, it means that the person or item is unwanted or unwelcome, but keeps showing up.

Example:  Sandra found Greg creepy and strange. He was like a bad penny – always showing up wherever she went.

Origin: In the 18th century, pennies were frequently counterfeited, and people would unwittingly end up with them. Even if they managed to pass them off, sooner or later they’d end up with another one. So, bad pennies became common (and unwanted) and this led to the expression referring to something or someone unwanted.

I know I’ve heard this one in one of the Indiana Jones movies – have you heard it anywhere else?

 

Fell swoop

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Today’s expression is fell swoop.

Explanation: If you say something happened in a fell swoop, you mean it happened suddenly, with several events occuring at the same time.

Example:  When Brian failed his French exam and his English one, he felt his academic career was doomed – all in one fell swoop.

Origin: This one isn’t easy to make sense out of. You have to take the word “fell” way back to the 13th century, when it meant fierce or savage. And a swoop would refer to the way a bird would down and dive for pray. So – originally it meant to savagely attack something, but over the years, it’s been softened down.

Shakespeare gets some credit on this one – either inventing it or at least giving it some publicity. :)

From Macbeth, 1605:

MACDUFF: [hearing that his family and servants have all been killed]

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?