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.