Languages are the ultimate borrowers, always keen to take from their linguistic cousins, and the English language is certainly no exception. Over the centuries — through travel, trade, empire, invasion, and cultural exchange — it has absorbed many words from languages both ancient and comparatively modern, including Latin, French, Arabic, Chinese, and a dozen other tongues. Many of these words have stuck, becoming commonplace in their adoptive language. But English doesn’t borrow just individual words — it also has borrowed whole idioms. The result is a language peppered with expressions that feel distinctively English today, but that have their origins somewhere else entirely — in a different time, a different culture, and an entirely different language.
Here are six common idioms in English that came from other languages.
Devil’s Advocate
Today, “devil’s advocate” is a common idiom used to refer to someone who argues a contrary position for the sake of debate. But its origins are found in Latin, not English, and its roots are quite specific. In the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church introduced the position of Promoter of the Faith (promotor fidei in Latin), whose role was to examine the deeds — and possible miracles — attributed to individuals being examined for sainthood. The person holding this position was also known as the advocatus diaboli, or devil’s advocate, because part of their role was to scrutinize everything about the candidate — positive and negative — in order to judge their suitability for canonization. “Devil’s advocate” slowly made its way into English, borrowed directly from the Latin phrase but with its meaning broadened beyond its theological origins.
“To lose face” (to be humiliated or suffer a loss of respect) and its opposite, “to save face” (to avoid humiliation and retain respect), are common idioms in English. Perhaps surprisingly, both arrived in English via late-19th-century interactions with China, where diū liǎn and liú diǎr miànzi (meaning “to lose face” and “to save face,” respectively) and their Pidgin English counterparts were common expressions with great cultural significance. In Chinese culture, face (one’s social standing and reputation) was a concept of considerable weight and nuance. So, when British diplomats, traders, and missionaries heard the two expressions, they took note — and then took the idioms back home to Britain, where the concepts of losing face and saving face began to be used in contexts far lighter than the original Chinese idioms would have implied.
If we’re summarizing something concisely, we might preface it by saying, “In a nutshell ….” It’s a snappy expression that may have a satisfyingly classical lineage. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described a copy of Homer’s “Iliad” that was so small it could fit into the shell of a nut — in nuce in Latin. It seems highly unlikely that an epic poem such as the “Iliad” could actually fit inside a nutshell, no matter how small the writing. But, whether or not the tiny book truly existed, the image stuck and “in a nutshell” became a common expression in Latin and later in English. Shakespeare helped establish the idiom in English when he had Hamlet speak the line, “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” By the 1800s, the meaning had narrowed to refer more specifically to something stated in a few words.
The notion of taking something with a grain of salt was first recorded in the English language in 1647, but the phrase may have originated in ancient Rome — with Pliny the Elder as well. In his encyclopedic 37-volume Naturalis Historia, completed in 77 CE, Pliny tells the story of a Roman general who found a poison antidote among the belongings of Mithridates VI — an antidote that should, according to the Latin instructions, be taken addito salis grano, or “having added a grain of salt.” Pliny’s work popularized the idea of using salt to neutralize poison, and also created the long-lasting, salt-related metaphor. The idiom eventually found its way into the English language, where it’s used as a suggestion for treating claims with a healthy degree of skepticism.
When we describe someone as having blue blood, it typically means that they belong to a royal, noble, or at least socially prominent family. But the origin of the expression is problematic by today’s standards. The idiom entered English as a direct translation of the Spanish sangre azul. The phrase originated among the Castilian nobility of the early 19th century (and perhaps earlier), who claimed that their blood ran blue as it was “untainted” by non-Castilian populations. The notion likely arose due to the blue veins that were visible beneath their pale skin — and that weren’t visible in those of a darker complexion, such as the Moors. The phrase entered the English language not long after, in reference to any member of an aristocratic family.
This phrase, which means something is completely incomprehensible, was popularized in English by William Shakespeare. He used it in Julius Caesar — written around 1599 — when Casca says of Cicero’s speech: “Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.” But Shakespeare may have borrowed it from an older Latin phrase used by medieval monks: Graecum est; non legitur, literally meaning “It is Greek; it cannot be read.” The monks, who were capable of reading Latin but not necessarily so good with Greek, wrote this in the margins of manuscripts when they encountered Greek text they couldn’t decipher. So goes the theory, at least. It’s hard to say for certain whether Shakespeare coined the saying independently or possibly adapted the monks’ marginal complaint — but he certainly helped establish the idiom in the English language.
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