This English expression is used as a metaphor and does not relate in any way to cats or bags!
Meaning
The expression is used to denote that someone has revealed some information which was previously concealed. It is often used when a surprise has been ruined by a slip of the tongue.
Etymology
There is no definite origins of this expression but it is suggested that it dates back to 1530 and the fraud of substituting a cat for a piglet at markets. At this time markets were commonplace and the literal substituting of a cat for a pig in the bag at a market was frequent. The sellers would sell the “pig” in a bag, but instruct the buyer not to open it until they get home, under the pretence that this would mean the pig could escape.The buyer would carry the bag all the way home, only to have it revealed when opened that they had received a cat instead of a pig. The first known use of the phrase in print is from a 1760 edition of The London Magazine which writes “We could have wished that the author… had not let the cat out of the bag.” Cats are very common in English proverbs although it is not clear why this is. They appear in “curiosity killed the cat” and “when the cat is away the mice will play,” among many others.
Example
An example of this expression in context can be found on the BBC news website in an article from February 2015 about Prime Minister David Cameron’s spending plans regarding budgets. A quote in the article from the Labour Party reads “Labour said he had “let the cat out of the bag” while the Liberal Democrats described it as a “real-terms squeeze”.
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This English expression is very commonly used in both spoken and written English. It is used as a metaphor although it can also be used in its literal sense.
Meaning
The expression is used to mean that you shouldn’t judge something based solely on its appearance, rather, you should look deeper and beyond first impressions before judging it. It can be used to refer to anything and is often used to refer to people and the fact that one should get to know someone before making judgements.
Etymology
The expression can be dated back to the mid 19th century in the 1867 edition of the newspaper Piqua Democrat, which writes “Don’t judge a book by its cover, see a man by his cloth, as there is often a good deal of solid worth and superior skill underneath a jacket and yaller pants.” It is suggested that this phrase originally was used in spoken language when people visited bookshops and were immediately attracted to a book based on its appearance and as a result would often miss out on books which had less appealing covers but could be equally interesting inside. It was then extended to be used in a less literal sense but with the same overall meaning.
Example
An example of the usage of this expression can be found in George Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss, in which the character Mr Tulliver used it in its literal sense when referring to a cover of a book and saying that Daniel Defoe’s The History of the Devil was “beautifully bound and one should not judge a book by its cover.”
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The English expression “barking up the wrong tree” is commonly used in informal contexts. It does not relate to nature or animals and is in fact used as a metaphor.
Meaning
The expression is used to suggest that one has been looking for something in completely the wrong place or heading in completely the wrong direction; both literally and physically. It can also be used in relation to making an accusation and having accused the wrong person.
Etymology
The expression can be dated back to America during the 1800s when hunting with packs of dogs was extremely popular. At this time the expression was used when prey would trick dogs into believing they were hiding in a certain tree when in fact they had already managed to escape and move to another tree. At this time it was used purely in a literal sense to denote dogs which were literally barking at and trying to hunt an animal in the wrong tree. It was first used in a more metaphorical sense in 1832 in James Kirke Paulding’s Westward Ho! which writes “so I thought I’d set him barking up the wrong tree a little.” After this first recorded usage the expression began appearing frequently in publications, particularly in newspaper articles.
Example
An example of the usage of this expression can be found in James Hall’s 1833 Legends of the West, where he wrote, “It doesn’t take a Philadelphia lawyer to tell that the man who serves the master one day, and the enemy six, has just six chances out of seven to go to the devil. You are barking up the wrong tree, Johnson.”
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The English expression “don’t cry over spilt milk” is fairly commonly used and is generally given as a piece of advice. It is used in a metaphorical sense rather than relating to the physical spilling of milk.
Meaning
The expression means don’t be upset over something which has already happened and therefore can’t be changed. It is generally given as advice using the phrase “It’s no use crying over spilt milk.”
Etymology
There is no verified record regarding the origin of this expression although the earliest known record dates to 1888 in a book called Banking Under Difficulties. It is found in this book after a man has been robbed of his money and he then states “It was no use, however, crying over spilt milk.” This is the earliest record of the expression in its current form but a similar expression “no weeping for shed milk,” can be dated back to 1659 in a book called Paramoigraphy, by historian James Howell. At this time the verb “to shed” had the same meaning as “to spill,” although now the meaning of this verb has changed. It is unclear why the drink of milk was chosen as the spilled liquid although there has been speculation that the advice was generally given to children by their mothers after having literally spilt their milk.
Example
An example of the expression in usage can be found in an article on the BBC news website from 2015 which centred around the claims from the British Party UKIP that there had been fraud involved in the by-elections. The quote in the article comes from Tom Watson, a member of the Labour party who accuses UKIP of “crying over spilt milk.”
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The English idiom, "at the eleventh hour" is often used in conversation. It can seem rather confusing if you do not have prior knowledge of what it me...
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