Below are the results of my exhaustive research into the origins of our most colorful expressions and phrases ....

BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL

As one might suspect, this expression derives from the game of pool, in particular the version called Eight Ball in which all other balls must be sunk before the "8" Ball. What most folks aren't aware of is that the game has become miniaturized. In ancient times the game was played with mammoth sized balls that were pushed around an arena and deposited in deep wells by trained elephants. The rules back then allowed a player to position one of his slaves directly in the path of the "8" Ball as a semi-effective obstacle. Among the slaves, this was considered an undesirable and hazardous assignment, especially after the outbreak in 1500 B.C. of elephant glaucoma.

THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND

This term is relatively recent, originating in Chicago during Prohibition when wives of bootleggers used the laundry they hung from their third-story clotheslines as secret signals. According to the code, one sheet meant they had run out of grain alcohol, two sheets meant the bathtub was full of gin and they had run out of bottles to put it in, and three sheets meant someone had fallen into the tub.

Legend has it that the practice was abandoned after one housewife, who happened to live next door to the family of Elliot Ness, in her flustered state of mind got the lines mixed up and pinned her three sheets to the line of her neighbor.

When a clean up goon arrived at the door carrying a large empty valise and pushed his way past her, heading toward the bathroom, Mrs. Ness assumed he was an overzealous Fuller Brush man anxious to demonstrate his wares.

Whatever he expected to find in the tub, it was certainly not the formidable aspect of the treasury agent's mother-in-law wielding a razor like an inexperienced Rabbi on the eighth day.

His hasty exit was attended by a trail of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Which greatly facilitated his being tracked to a local speakeasy, where he was already on this third boilermaker. The subsequent raid and arrests yielded several convictions and history tells that the goon in question spent the rest of his days folding linen in the prison laundry.

WEAR YOUR HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE

In early Medieval times members of the Butchers Guild would attend meetings in their aprons as evidence that their businesses were thriving: the bloodier the apron, the prouder the owner. This got out of hand to the extent that they put aside special aprons for the meetings, on which their wives would sew an assortment of abdominal organs, such as livers and kidneys. Such a garment eventually became the accepted formal wear; a young butcher who was courting a bride would wear one when he came calling as an indication of his ability to provide for her. By the late thirteenth century, the practice had evolved to such a degree that it was mandatory for any young man asking for a maiden's hand in marriage to approach her father wearing the heart of a chicken sewn on his right sleeve.

PAY THROUGH THE NOSE

This expression is believed to have originated over a hundred years ago on an island in the South Seas, the inhabitants of which were terrorized by an enormous gorilla with a sinus condition. The situation was usually kept under control with a special hot mustard prepared by the Medicine Man and applied liberally to the bananas near the gorilla's hangouts. One day, however, the gorilla's dining habits were greatly altered when he discovered the practice of peeling same, thus discarding his medicinal condiment along with the peel, the result being that the oversized simian soon began feeling stuffy and grumpy. The comic aspects of the subsequent rampage conducted along a path strewn with banana peels was lost on the suffering natives who convened and demanded a solution from their Chief. The solution was obvious but lacked the requisite volunteer. Finally, it was determined that the mustard should be delivered directly to the sinus cavity via the nasal passage by that individual guilty of the most serious offense in the history of the village, which happened to be overcharging the Chief's wife for a rhinoplasty. Thus it was that the Medicine Man atoned for his crime by going where no man had gone before.

LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH

It's a little known fact that the expression "eye teeth" derives from a breed of horses raised by King Wilbur the First for the sole purpose of presenting them as gifts to visiting noblemen. These horses could actually see through their teeth, an ability which enables them to distinguish between wild oats and tame oats and even maresied oats, the latter of which the males would not swallow but would masticate into a hard wad which they would spit at the females as part of their courting ritual.

As it became known that this characteristic improved their capacity as stud animals, the guest would often attempt to compare the visual acuity of the beasts before making their selection. Since the result of this practice was often a gooey projectile in their own ocular organ, the task eventually deflected to the grooms, who solved the problem by segregating the males and females.

Ecobiologists are still trying to determine why the breed became extinct. Which leads one to the conclusion that their hindsight is aptly named.

BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH

Linguists have traced this expression to a nomadic culture which for millenia has maintained itself on the fringes of the Arctic Circle.  Some anthropologists postulate that much like the Vulcan extra eyelid protected that humanoid species from the ultraviolet rays of their sun, paleolithic ancestors of our arctic race actually had evolved a layer of skin on their teeth to protect them from brain freeze.  Support for this theory is derived from cave drawings depicting a group of females engaged in various versions of what appears to be depilatory activity and one in particular is focused on the dental area. Corroborating evidence comes from forensic examination of uncovered adolescent remains which reveal traces in the enamel of a chemical molecularly similar to benzoil peroxide.


Extrapolations of these findings lead theorists to describe a scenario in which hunters, much like those forest animals who chew off a leg to escape from a trap, have sacrificed their dental epidermis in order to escape the clutches of a wooly mammoth.  This occurence must have been frequent enough to create a demand for replacements because recently deciphered tablets of law include proscription against trade deals.  There is some speculation that this may have led to blackmarket acitivity, especially among their urban population.  If once accepts the basic premise, the native american custom of scalp collecting may possibly be linked to their migration across the Bering Strait.