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Some sources say that being "saved the bell" was originally a reference to people prematurely declared dead. Or that "dead ringers" were once people prematurely declared dead. Or that wakes were designed to ... you know what? Let's just say there are a lot of erroneous stories related to people being prematurely declared dead. In this episode of The List Show, Erin debunks popular (but incorrect) origin stories for popular expressions, from "bring home the bacon" to "raining cats and dogs." In case you forgot, The List Show is a trivia-tastic, fact-filled show for curious people. Subscribe here for new Mental Floss episodes every Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpZ5qUqpW4hW4zdfuBxMSJA?sub_confirmation=1 Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 8 Widely Repeated Phrase Origins, Debunked | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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0:00
Saved by the Bell is a fun expression for lucky high schoolers. It's also a classic sitcom and
0:05
according to legend, a reference to people being mistakenly buried alive. After stories came out about coffins with scratch marks on the inside
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Undertaker supposedly came up with the idea to use life-saving signaling systems
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Essentially, a string would be tied to the possibly deceased's wrist. That string led up
0:21
through the ground to a bell. So if the corpse turned out to be not-so-dead after all and started
0:25
moving around, the bell would ring and the poor soul could be saved. Saved by the bell
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It's a fun, albeit morbid, etymological origin. But as it turns out, most of that story is probably
0:36
untrue. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com, and this is The List Show
0:42
Today I'll be debunking the origins of several more common phrases, including two other Coffin-related expressions, oddly enough. Let's get started
0:49
While the fear of being buried alive was, indeed, a real thing — Hans Christian Andersen
0:59
George Washington, and Auguste Renoir are just a few of the famous people who were said
1:03
to have suffered from taphophobia — there's not really any proof that these fears were based on real incidents
1:08
In the late 1890s, in fact, a medical journal surveyed a group of doctors and experts
1:12
And according to their report, none of them had ever known or heard of a duly authenticated
1:17
case of burial alive, and considered the accounts of such occurrences totally unworthy of credence
1:22
or even serious attention. If people weren't actually being buried alive, let alone saved by
1:27
any bells, it's hard to see how this lurid origin story could be based in fact. And to put the final
1:33
nail in the coffin, so to speak, the phrase didn't appear in print until the late 19th century
1:37
a good 100 years after things like safety coffins began popping up. This particular usage wasn't even
1:43
in reference to a premature burial. It was used in the context of boxing. To be saved by the bell
1:48
is simply a reference to the end of round bell that could save a boxer from getting the pulp
1:52
beaten out of him. Slightly less morbid. Slightly. While we still have images of people waking up
1:57
in buried coffins in our heads, let's talk about the phrase, dead ringer. Today we use it to refer
2:02
to a person or thing that looks very like another, a double, in the words of the Oxford English
2:07
dictionary. But many believe it, like Saved by the Bell, originated in reference to a not-quite-dead
2:12
person ringing a bell from inside a coffin. Once again, cute story, but doesn't pass fact check
2:17
The word ringer is used in reference to a lookalike, person or animal, that is brought
2:22
into a competition to secure a victory. It was derived from the phrase to ring the changes
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an old slang term that meant to substitute one thing for another fraudulently and take the more valuable item Combine ringer with the adjective dead meaning exact and you get dead ringer Not a
2:38
dead person ringing. And those aren't the only two phrases wrongly attributed to dubious tales
2:42
of burials gone wrong. There's also the graveyard shift. Some claim that this phrase comes from the
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name given to graveyard workers who had to work night shifts in order to potentially rescue someone
2:51
who was buried alive. I mean, it makes sense. What good is a graveside alarm if there's no one
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around to hear it. Unfortunately for Taffophiles, this expression has a few likely sources, but none of them
3:02
involve a graveyard. Graveyard Shift dates back to the late 19th century, and when it appeared, it was in reference
3:07
to things like coal mines and gambling houses. The after-midnight early morning run is called the graveyard shift, one 1888 newspaper article
3:14
about a gambling house noted, A 1906 newspaper article mentioned that miners worked a graveyard shift lasting from 11 p.m
3:21
to 3 a.m. Sailors, meanwhile, did something called a graveyard watch, from midnight to 4 a.m. while
3:26
the rest of the crew was asleep. Some say that it was known as the Graveyard Watch because
3:29
of how quiet the ship was during that time. Spooky. Others, however, claimed it got the
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name because disasters often occurred during those hours. Arguably, spookier. So basically, it seems like any number of workers doing their jobs during the dead of
3:42
night is the source of this expression. Not some poor soul sitting in a literal graveyard
3:47
waiting for a bell to ring. And while we're somehow still on the subject of dead bodies not being so dead, let's talk
3:52
about the origin of the word wake. As in, funeral wake. Here's the fun story that often gets told. Just a few centuries ago, people used to drink
3:59
out of lead cups. Not a great start. As the stories go, putting booze in these vessels created a lead-laced punch so potent
4:06
that it would cause people to collapse on the way home and not wake up for days. Think
4:10
of the hangover. Passersby would presume these poor souls were dead and deliver the body
4:15
to their family's home to prepare for the funeral. The body would sit in a room in the house for a few days as the family hung around, eating and drinking, hoping their loved one
4:22
would wake back to life from their lead-induced coma. But there are a few holes in this story
4:27
Lead poisoning is definitely not good, but it doesn't happen all at once, as this story
4:31
would have you believe. Instead, it occurs over time. So drinking whiskey from a lead cup all night is not going to lead to a corpse-like knockout
4:39
That's probably just alcohol poisoning. In reality, the word wake has origins going back several centuries
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It's related to the Old Norse word vaca, which means vigil, and the Old High German
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wata, which means watch. According to the OED, by the 15th century, wake began to be used in reference to the
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watching of the body of a loved one, as well as the drinking, feasting, and other observances
5:00
incidental to this But the lead cup story doesn hold water Or booze Okay let step away from graveyards and dead bodies and talk about something a little less morbid Bread When we talk about the upper crust these days we usually referring to the
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creme de la creme of society, the aristocracy, celebrities, rich people. Some origin stories
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for the phrase suggest that it comes from the desirable qualities of the top part of a literal
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loaf of bread. Back in the old days, bread was supposedly split amongst people based on their
5:27
status. Workers would get the bottom, the burnt part. The family would get the middle chunk of
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bread. And guests would get the top, the upper crust. Why the top crust of bread was considered
5:37
the best is unclear. I personally am a fan of the middle, but hey. There's only one reference to a
5:43
custom kind of like this, and that's in a 1460 book. The passage, summarized in English, reads in
5:48
part, take a loaf of bread, pair the edges, cut the upper crust for your lord. That's the only
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reference to literal breadcrust used in relation to a member of the upper class for hundreds of
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years. In the mid-16th century, the phrase was also used to refer to the outermost layer of
6:02
the Earth's surface. Upper crust in reference to the upper class didn't become commonplace until
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the 19th century. Around the same time, delightfully, it was used as slang for a person's head or their
6:12
hat. It seems more likely that the upper crust was connected to upper classes simply because
6:16
it's the top, rather than a reference to any super-specific bread-sharing practice
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Bring home the bacon The story goes that pork products used to be pretty difficult to get. So if you were
6:26
able to buy some, you would often hang it in your home for your guests to see
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How impressive! You brought home the bacon! Well, that story is most likely pig poo
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Some instead trace the origin of bring home the bacon to the tradition of catching a greased
6:39
swine at a county fair and then getting to take it home, while others believe it comes
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from a custom referenced in Chaucer, in which married couples made another vow
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If, a year and a day after saying, I do, they could promise they didn't regret their marriage
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they were given some pork as a reward. But these are unlikely, too. The phrase
6:56
bring home the bacon, actually didn't appear in writing until 1906. The mother of a boxer
7:00
was quoted in a newspaper telling her son to bring home the bacon. It became popular among
7:04
sports writers after that, and likely spread from there. Don't throw the baby out with the
7:08
bathwater is a very specific piece of advice, but it has an understandable meaning. It's a warning
7:14
to not get rid of something valuable when discarding something unwanted. The story goes that, in the 16th century, the order in which a family took a bath followed
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a certain hierarchy. The man of the house would get into the big tub of clean, hot water
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Next came any other sons or men in the house. Then the women would bathe, followed by the children, and, bringing up the rear, the babies
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By that point as you might imagine the water was no longer nice and clean It was so nasty in fact that it was completely opaque with dirt murky that a baby for example could get lost in it So mothers would be told a warning don throw the baby out with the bathwater
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But this story is almost surely not true. For one, a big bath of hot water in the 16th
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century was not a common occurrence, thanks to the fact that people had to lug buckets
7:56
of water up from the river first. In fact, most baths were something more like a sponge bath
8:02
version of the expression, which dates to the 1800s, came from a German proverb that roughly
8:06
translates as, to empty out the child with the bath. That first appeared in a satirical work from
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the 16th century. So it wasn't meant to be taken seriously and had nothing to do with babies
8:16
actually being thrown out with the bath. As for why it became so popular? Well, if you had a choice
8:21
of don't throw away the good with the bad or don't throw the baby away with the bathwater
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which would you choose? That meaning is the same, but the former conjures up slightly less vivid
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imagery. You hear that? It's raining cats and dogs out there. Have you ever thought about how
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odd that phrase is? Well, there's an interesting tall tale people like to throw around about it
8:39
and it goes like this. Once upon a time, people's roofs consisted of straw on top of wood. And many
8:45
animals lived up there because it was warm. Mice. Rats. Bugs. Cats. Dogs. An entire zoo living up
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there. And as the story goes, when it got really rainy, the animals would slip off the thatch and
8:56
and fall from the roof. Now it's raining cats and dogs. Cute. And sad
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But there isn't much evidence for this origin story. While some animals may have taken shelter
9:05
in thatched roofs, it's not really clear how rain would cause them to come flying down
9:09
from there. A less complicated theory from etymologists attributes the phrase to the
9:13
age-old war between the two animals. Doing anything like cats and dogs means something
9:17
of high intensity. Like, they're going at it like cats and dogs. So it wouldn't be a
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huge leap to describe heavy rain as cats and dogs. Some other more speculative theories are out there as well
9:28
One is that the phrase comes from the French word for waterfall, catadoupe. But some, like etymologist Gary Martin, aren't convinced that that theory is legit
9:35
Another potential origin might be found in a 1592 text that reads, Instead of thunderbolts, shooteth nothing but dogbolts, or catbolts
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What are dogbolts and catbolts, you ask? They're heavy metal bolts used for securing gates and holding together pieces of wood
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So a heavy storm might have been equated to the sound or feeling of being pelted by
9:53
heavy metal tools. But again, not all etymologists are convinced that that's where it's raining cats and dogs
9:58
comes from. Maybe it's just kind of fun to describe a really intense storm with this really evocative phrase
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