The term actually originated from the British Cricket games. Any bowler who retired three batsmen with three consecutive balls in cricket was entitled to a new hat at the expense of the club to commemorate this feat. Later, the term was used to indicate three consecutive scores in other sports. The phrase finally broadened to include any string of three important successes or achievements, in any field.
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Getting Down to Brass Tacks
Originated from textile industry.
In early American times, women would buy fabrics in large quantities. Merchants would try to cheat them by reeling the fabric out fast.
The merchants would have brass tacks on the table to indicate a yard. If they reel the fabrics out fast enough, they would be able to cheat a little.
The women buying the fabric realized what they were doing, and would exclaim, ‘You need to get down to brass tacks!’
In mid-18th century England a group of ladies decided to replace evenings of card playing and idle chatter with ‘conversation parties,’ inviting illustrious men of letters to discuss literary and intellectual topics with them. One regular guest was scholar- botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet. His hostesses willingly overlooked his cheap blue worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in order to have the benefit of his lively conversation. Those who considered it inappropriate for women to aspire to learning derisively called the group the ‘Blue Stocking Society.’ The women who were the original bluestockings rose above the attempted put-down and adopted the epithet as a name for members of their society.
16th-century English revelers toasting each other’s health sometimes drank a brimming mug of spirits straight to the bottom — drinking ‘all-out,’ they called it.
German tipplers did the same and used the German expression for ‘all out’ — ‘gar aus.’
The French adopted the German term as ‘carous,’ using the adverb in their expression ‘boire (to drink) carous,’ and that phrase, with its idiomatic sense of ‘to empty the cup,’ led to ‘carrousse,’ a French noun meaning ‘a large draft of liquor.’
And that’s where English speakers picked up ‘carouse’ in the mid-1500s, first as a noun (which later took on the sense of a general ‘drinking bout’), and then as a verb meaning ‘to drink freely.’