Day 311: Learning New Facts

I love learning new facts. And I'm grateful for learning new things. Life would be boring if we never learned past a certain point. So I love learning new things because it expands my mind, helps me develop more of a objective perspective depending on subject, and let's be honest - it's fun to learn new things, share them with others, and look a little bit like a smarty. :) Today I learned that Carolyn Keene, the author of the Nancy Drew books, is not one person or even two people but a whole team of people authored those books throughout the years*! Women and men! It blew my mind! But how fun to know that now. What new fact have you learned recently that fascinated you?

*The same is true of The Hardy Boys also!

Comments

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

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