Safety Expressions We Used to Say

摘要

Recently I had a conversation with an elderly man at a church gathering in which he affectionately referred to his wife as a dame. Dame: That's not a word often heard these days except in old Popeye cartoon reruns. Here's another old saying: My wife's grandmother described a pain she recently suffered as hurting like the dickens. I've heard that expression many times before, but on that occasion I wondered, what in the world is dickens anyway? Charles Dickens perhaps? What does the legendary author have to do with pain? Remember Wally in Leave It to Beaver! He used to use the word swell to describe things as being good. Doesn't swell mean the same thing as swollen? Anyway, I digress.