Where did the saying Lock Stock & Barrel come from?
3 min read
Asked by: Bryan Wohlman
“Lock, stock, and barrel” is a merism used predominantly in the United Kingdom and North America, meaning “all”, “total” or “everything”. It derives from the effective portions of a gun: the lock, the stock, and the barrel.
Where did Saying lock stock and barrel come from?
The earliest use of the phrase lock, stock and barrel to mean everything or the whole thing is in a letter written by Sir Walter Scott in 1817: “Like the High-landman’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel, to put her into repair.”
Is lock stock and barrel an idiom?
Or that you had to empty everything out of your bag—lock, stock, and barrel—when you went through airport security. You may have used this idiom for years without knowing its origin. And you might be surprised to know that the three words in this phrase refer to the three parts of a gun.
What does they sold the property lock stock and barrel mean?
phrase. If you say, for example, that someone moves or buys something lock, stock, and barrel, you are emphasizing that they move or buy every part or item of it.
What technique is used in the quotation lock stock and barrel?
In many ways, lock, stock, and barrel follows the standard path from literal to metaphorical to idiom. At first it refers the parts of a gun, then to the entirety of something, and then fossilizes into a fixed idiom.
What does it mean to lock and load?
“Locked and loaded” means “locking the magazine or cartridge into the gun and loading the ammunition into the gun’s chamber.” “Lock and load” means “lock your safety and load a magazine into your weapon.” “Lock and load” is “a military command to open the bolt of a machine gun (Lock Open) and load it.”
Where does the saying dog in a manger come from?
A person who spitefully refuses to let someone else benefit from something for which he or she has no personal use: “We asked our neighbor for the fence posts he had left over, but, like a dog in the manger, he threw them out rather than give them to us.” The phrase comes from one of Aesop’s fables, about a dog lying
What is the meaning of the idiom smell a rat?
Suspect something is wrong
smell a rat. Suspect something is wrong, especially a betrayal of some kind. For example, When I didn’t hear any more from my prospective employer, I began to smell a rat. This expression alludes to a cat sniffing out a rat. [ c.
What does six of one half a dozen of the other?
US, informal. —used to say that one does not see any real difference between two possible choices.
What lock stock means?
“Lock, stock, and barrel” is a merism used predominantly in the United Kingdom and North America, meaning “all”, “total” or “everything”. It derives from the effective portions of a gun: the lock, the stock, and the barrel.
What does have you over a barrel mean?
to put someone in a very difficult situation in which the person has no choice about what they do: She knows I need the work so she has me over a barrel in terms of what she pays me.
What does stuck in a barrel mean?
(slang) In an unpleasant or dangerous situation.
What does the saying fish in a barrel mean?
Ridiculously easy, as in Setting up a computer nowadays is like shooting fish in a barrel. This hyperbolic expression alludes to the fact that fish make an easy target inside a barrel (as opposed to swimming freely in the sea). [ Early 1900s]
