This column studies the history of words and phrases, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time

Take it with a grain of salt - To accept what you hear, but be skeptical about its validity.

Origin: Salt was believed to possess healing properties. If someone suspected their meal of being poisoned, they would add a pinch of salt to combat the poisonous ingredients. The phrase “take it with a grain of salt” derived from this culinary practice and was applied to the exchange of information, the analogy being that a lie in conversation is the equivalent of poison on your food, which coincidentally are always better with a little salt.

Don’t beat around the bush - Don’t float around the issue. Get to the point already.

Origin: Most people who study idioms believe that this phrase is tied to old timely hunting practices that were utilized before you could use dynamite and booby traps to kill any kind of game, like you can today. Back then, a team of ‘beaters’ would go into the woods and literally beat around bushes to frighten the game out of the woods and into the waiting cross hairs of lazy hunters. The hunters, however, were the only ones who were allowed to actually kill the prey. The beaters basically created a diversion. Therefore, beating around the bush is creating a distraction to avoid confronting the actual issue, or prey, as it were.

Straight from the horse’s mouth - This information was received from the highest authority.

Origin: In horse racing circles, tips on which horses were injured, rested, and particularly strong came from those in closest proximity to the horses themselves. The most trusted sources for horse-racing-related information were stable hands, trainers and others. The phrase indicated that the information came from a place even closer to the horse than its inner-circle of handlers: the horse itself.

Alternatively, a horse trader would bend the ear of a prospective buyer with all kinds of talk about the animal, but for a clear measure of its worth, one can simply look in the animal’s mouth. You can tell a great deal about a horse from its mouth: age, nutrition, general health etc.

The apple of my eye - Someone or something that is cherished above all else.

Origins: Apparently this is a really old phrase, and one of its earliest uses dates all the way back to 885 AD. The ‘apple’ of the eye is referring to the pupil which is the most important part. The pupil was called an apple because, in 885 AD, an apple was apparently the closest resemblance to a pupil, in that both apples and pupils were round. It seems strange at first, but keep in mind that they probably didn’t have a lot of things in 885 AD.