Q. What exactly is this site?
A running collection of idioms, inventions, oddities, and other junk knowledge — each one dug up, fact-checked as best as one obsessive person can manage, and written up with its origin story, a few fast facts, and sources. 513 entries filed so far, with more added as they're researched.
Q. Who's behind it?
Just Bob — see the curator's note on the homepage. No editorial staff, no institution, just a long-running personal habit of chasing down where phrases actually came from.
Q. How is each entry researched?
Every entry starts from a specific claim worth checking — a date, a person, an invention, a first-print citation — and gets traced back through dictionaries, period sources, and reference works like Christine Ammer's The Dictionary of Clichés, Francis Grose's 18th-century slang dictionaries, and the Oxford English Dictionary. Where an origin story is popular folklore rather than settled fact, the entry says so.
Q. Does AI write these?
AI tools are used in the research and drafting process — pulling together sources, drafting a first pass, and helping keep the format consistent across hundreds of entries. Nothing goes up without a human pass, but the honest answer is: yes, AI is part of the pipeline, and this site doesn't pretend otherwise.
Q. An origin story I've heard elsewhere doesn't match what's here — what gives?
Idiom etymology is a genuinely messy field. Plenty of "origin stories" in wide circulation are folk etymology — a good story that caught on, whether or not it's actually how the phrase started. Where there's real dispute, entries try to lay out the competing theories rather than pick one and pretend it's settled. If you've got a source that contradicts something here, send it over — genuinely useful corrections get made.
Q. What's the difference between "Idioms" and "Junk Drawer"?
Idioms are phrases and sayings with a figurative meaning — "bite the bullet," "cost an arm and a leg." Junk Drawer covers everything else that didn't fit that mold but was too interesting to leave out: inventions, historical oddities, scientific curiosities, and stray facts. Both are filed together in the vault and filterable by type.
Q. How do the six categories work?
Every entry gets filed under one of six loose categories — things like Domestic Chaos & The Culinary Cabinet, High Seas, Hard Labor, & Warfare, or The Menagerie (Animals & Agriculture) — based on where the phrase's origin actually happened, not what it's used to describe today. You can filter by category from the vault.
Q. Can I suggest a phrase to research?
Always. That's most of what keeps the list growing — reach out through the contact page with the phrase and, if you've got it, why you're curious about it. No guarantee on timing, but it goes on the list.
Q. Is there a way to search the whole collection?
Yes — the vault has a live search box that matches against every entry's title and full text, plus filters for type and category.
Didn't find your question here
Send it in — genuinely useful questions get added to this list, and everything else gets a real answer back.
go to the contact page →