The More You Know: Ten Everyday Phrases That Originated From Poetry

Yes! From Huffington Post's "Books" Section and brought to you by Max Minkler at Riffle we present: "Ten Everyday Phrases That Originated From Poetry."

Think poetry has nothing to do with you? Actually you recite poems all the time through the vocab, expressions, and common idioms you use every day. Chaucer was the original "Twitter" user, Shakespeare the first person with "swagger," and Homer's characters "bit the dust" before anyone Queen had in mind. The etymology of a word - that's the history of its form and meaning - is far more interesting than you might expect.

Though which came first, the idiom or the poem, is often tough to track, there are more than a few that come directly from the poet who coined them. Our day-to-day drawl is crammed with metaphysical verse, Romantic waxings, and classical allusions that make us all poetry fans - whether we know it or not.

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