Endangered Phrases: Intriguing Idioms Dangerously Close to Extinctionby Steven D. Price
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Most of these phrases were familiar to me, which I found disappointing. There were a number of missing words in the descriptions (poor proof reading!) which I found annoying and a few of the phrases that were included had no background story, the author just said "we don't know where this came from."
The main thing that makes me glad I read this is that it did include an explanation of a phrase I have heard my whole life and didn't know the origin of. Frick and Frack was a Swiss comedy ice skating duo who appeared in the original Ice Follies in the 1930s. The phrase came to be applied to any pair of jokesters, especially those that looked like each other. My Mom often used this phrase to refer to my sister and I when we were kids, I can't imagine why.
