Big wig and losing face: A brief history of expressions
Today, a ‘big wig' generally refers to someone who has wealth and power. The term, however, dates back to a time when baths were taken only twice a year. To fight lice, men would shave their heads and wear . The wealthy, whose wigs were made from wool, would employ the cleaning method of baking them in a hollowed-out loaf of bread. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, and hence the term ‘big wig.'
The above demonstrates how personal hygiene was far from what it is today. Cleanliness was so overlooked that it was very common for many adults to have longstanding acne scars. As a result, women would spread bee's wax over their faces to smoothen their ravaged complexions.
If a woman, then, was staring a bit too intently at another's face, she was promptly reprimanded to: ‘mind your own bee's wax.' Also, were a waxed woman to smile, the wax would crack, and therefore to: ‘crack a smile.' Furthermore, if such women were to sit too close to the fire, the wax would melt, and hence the expression ‘losing face.'
Moving from faces to limbs, in George Washington's days, there were no cameras. Images were captured in paintings or sculpture, and some portraits of Washington would show him in his office with one arm behind his back, and both legs concealed behind a desk. As artists, then and now, know, legs and arms are generally more time consuming and difficult to paint, so the prices charged were not based on the number of people in the piece but rather how many limbs were to be painted. It's how the expression ‘it'll cost you an arm and a leg' emerged.
My favorite is this last one. Back in the day, common and inexpensive entertainment included playing cards. However, a tax was levied when one purchased a deck, but it only applied to the Ace of Spades. So the people, in order to avoid paying the tax, would buy only 51 cards, instead of the full 52. Because most popular card games could not be played without the full complement of 52 cards, the aforementioned people were considered slow because they weren't ‘playing with a full deck.'
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