25 common phrases

25 common phrases that you may not know have hidden meanings
Story by Olivia Monahan • 7h
Health Topics mentioned in this article


1 / 26

Commonly used phrases with hidden meanings

Commonly used phrases with hidden meanings
Paying through the nose
Drinking the Kool-Aid
It's a cakewalk
Long time, no see
Riding/calling shotgun
Eenie meenie minie mo
Commonly used phrases with hidden meanings
©Lisa Holder // Shutterstock
"You can't step into the same river twice."

This idiom is attributed to the late philosopher Heraclitus, who believed the concept of flux governs life. Nothing stays the same—people, environments, habits, or age. How we perceive things within our society and the processes we adopt constantly evolve, much like us, and include the words, phrases, and overall language we use.

There may not be an exact moment in history that pinpoints the birth of language, but scientists have attempted to narrow down the most accurate time frame. For quite some time, researchers concluded humans had spoken for at least 200 hundred thousand years. That is until a 2019 study suggested the "dawn of speech" could be traced back roughly 20 million years.

Each generation passes language to the next through man's oldest form of cultural communication: storytelling. Long before the printing press or social media, storytellers carried our descendants' lessons, histories, and cultural mores. These stories act as bookmarks along the timeline of our journey as humans, spotlighting the mindset of the people and prejudices that preceded us.

How did language first come about, and how did it form into the complicated syntax, grammar, and sentence structure it has today? That is a topic that would take far longer to parse through.

Instead, Stacker looked at how some commonly used phrases and idioms came about in America. While most evolve from innocuous origins, others are born from a place with undertones that are far darker, more nefarious places.

Continue reading to discover if these 25 commonly used phrases with hidden meanings remain in your vocabulary.