Historical Facts Behind Modern Sayings

Have you ever heard of someone being referred to as ‘piss poor’ or being so poor they didn’t have a pot to piss in? While these two sayings might not be spoken in genteel company, there are interesting historical facts behind these two modern sayings.

It’s a historical fact that human urine used to be used to tan animals skins. Poor families of yesteryear would all pee in a pot for 24 hours, then the pot of urine would be sold to a local tannery once per day. If a family made their meager living in this manner, they were referred to as being ‘piss poor’. This term used as a modern saying refers to a poor family that has little to get by with.

During the same era as ‘piss poor’ families were families who were so poor they literally didn’t have a pot to piss in. They were unable to collect the family urine output and sell it to the local tannery and were considered the poorest of the poor. As a modern saying, someone who ‘doesn’t have a pot to piss in’ means they have absolutely nothing.

Only wealthy people had floors in their homes made of material other then dirt. That’s the historical fact behind referring to someone being ‘dirt poor’, all they could afford then was a dirt floor. Used as a modern saying, someone who is dirt poor is living in poverty.

The modern saying of -’it’s raining cats and dogs’ has the historical fact of cats and dogs literally falling into the house during rains. Home used to be covered with a roof of thatch, a thick layer of straw. The thatched roof was a good place for small animals, like cats and sometimes dogs, to climb into for warmth and protection. During heavy, soaking rains, however, the thatch would become wet and slippery and the cats and dogs would loose their footing in the thatched roof and fall into the house. The modern saying of ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ refers to a heavy downpour of rain.

The thatched roof is also the historical fact behind the invention of the canopy bed. Necessity is the mother of invention, and cats and dogs weren’t the only ones to claim thatched roofs as hiding places. Various bugs made their homes in the thatched roofs and the bug’s droppings fell from the roof onto the beds of the home. A hand crafted bed with four tall posts and a sheet hanged on top of the four posts prevented the bug droppings from falling onto clean beds.

The modern sayings of ‘graveyard shift’, ‘dead ringer’ and ’saved by the bell’ all have historical facts behind them that come from the graveyard. In old historical England, burial ground was scarce, old coffins were exhumed, bones removed and taken to the ‘bone house’ for storage so the gravesite could be reused. The grave diggers began to notice when they opened the coffins to remove the bones, that some of the inside lids of an exhumed coffins would have fingernail scratch marks on them. They realized that meant they had been burying some people while they were still alive. To prevent that from happening anymore, the mortician or a family member would tie a string to the wrist of the ‘corpse’ and run the string through the coffin and through the dirt to the top of the ground during the burial. The opposite end of the string would be attached to a bell above ground, so if the dead person really wasn’t dead, they could ring the bell and be exhumed from their coffin, literally ’saved by the bell’ and called a ‘dead ringer’. Someone would have to sit outside in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell, just it case, and it’s where our modern saying of working the graveyard shift originated.