Zip your lips
When you’ve gotten a little too chatty or spilled someone else’s secret, it’s way past time to zip your lips. Translation: be quiet, stop talking, and don’t say a word! The idiom has even been altered into an emoji, the yellow face with a literal zipper as its mouth. Emojipedia.org reports that the zipper-mouthed face, which was added to most phones in 2015, means “my lips are sealed.”
Blessing in disguise
In a reference book called Cliches: Over 1500 Phrases Explored and Explained, linguist Betty Kirkpatrick said that “blessing in disguise” was first printed in the 18th century by a poet named James Hervey. He wrote, “E’en crosses from his sov’reign hand are blessings in disguise.” In other words, Hervey believed that the cross, an instrument for the death penalty, was simply a disguised blessing. Today, you probably don’t often refer to violent death as a blessing in disguise. But think about when a rain cloud has a silver lining. Or consider how sometimes one door closes so another can open. Those are blessings in disguise.
You’ll love these 27 hilarious (but totally real) names for groups of animals.
Under the weather
According to Harvest.net, an English language school, “under the weather” is one of the most frequently used idioms. Hopefully, the usage reflects our witty conversational skills rather than our sickness rates. Being under the weather describes someone down for the count with a cold or other minor illness. It’s not correct to say someone with a terminal disease is “under the weather,” for instance. Part of this has to do with the phrase’s origin, which we can trace back to the sailors of old. Farmers’ Almanac reveals that travellers prone to seasickness would go below deck during a storm to literally hide “under the weather.” The idiom gradually took hold as an indicator of short-term sickness.
