General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Phrases and their origins

A sight for sore eyes.
Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, first used this phrase in ‘A complete collection of genteel and ingenious conversation’, 1738, with the line "The Sight of you is good for sore Eyes."

A stone’s throw.
This term for 'a short distance' is a variation of 'a stone's cast', first used in early editions of the Bible, but it fell out of use.
Writer John Arbuthnot revived it in “The History of John Bull”, in 1712.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
This sweet saying came from the Roman poet Sextus Propertius Elegies:
"Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows."
In 1832, the modern variant of the phrase was coined by a 'Miss Strickland' in ‘The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature.’

Namby pamby
'Namby Pamby' was a nickname invented in the eighteenth century by poets John Gay, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift to mock the English poet and playwright Ambrose Philips.
Philips, a tutor to King George’s grandchildren, gained notoriety for the sycophantic poems he wrote about his charges, often using babyish language such as “eensy weesy”, and his rival poets gave his own name the same treatment.

The acid test
This term came from the California Gold Rush in the 19th century/
The acid-test ratio gets its name from the historic use of acid to test metals for gold.
If acid was applied to a metal and didn't corrode it, that meant it was real gold.