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Unique Word Origins: How 6 More Popular English Idioms Came to Be
From music to wagons to wild goose chases, these choice offerings don’t disappoint
In my first Unique Word Origins post, I described idioms as groups of words that are used as common expressions. While these expressions are generally understood by speakers of a certain language who have lived for some time in a certain culture, they can leave others scratching their heads. As usual, the modern idioms featured below come from a wide variety of time periods, locations, and customs.
Run the gamut
I really enjoyed researching this idiom as its origins delve into music history and one medieval monk’s intriguing career. By 1025, the young monk Guido of Arezzo had become so well known in northern Italy as a music theorist that other monks at his home abbey in Pomposa became hostile toward him, prompting him to move to the town of Arezzo, which had no abbey but had a choir he was invited to conduct. Guido was also eventually invited to visit Pope John XIX in Rome, which he did in 1028. Take that, jealous monks of Pomposa.
Guido became so popular early on because he’d developed a method to help singers learn to sing Gregorian chants in a short period of time. At Arezzo, he went on to invent staff…
