In Medieval times, the peasants sometimes could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man ‘could bring home the bacon.’ They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”
It has been pointed out that this is not the right origin for this phrase.
(as stated on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chew_the_fat#Email_hoax)
Chauvin was a soldier in the French Army during Napoleon’s time. He was know as the most nationalistic soldier in the French army.
People began to associate his name with nationalism and patriotism.
The Americans later used the term to describe the snobby French who believed that their country was better than others.
It eventually was perverted to the meaning today.
Charisma is a religous term originating in ancient Greece. It means ‘of the gods’, ‘of the spirit’. According to the ancient Greeks, a person with charisma had ‘the spirit of the gods’ flowing through them and this was what gave them that special, magical, charismatic quality.
‘Argy-bargy’ and its slightly older variant ‘argle-bargle’ have been a part of British English since the second half of the 19th century. ‘Argy’ and ‘argle’ evolved in certain English and Scottish dialects as variant forms of ‘argue.’ As far as we can tell, ‘bargy’ and ‘bargle’ never existed as independent words; they only came to life with the compounds as singsong doublings of ‘argy’ and ‘argle.’
“Catch-22” originated as the title of a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller. The original catch-22 in the novel was as follows: a combat pilot was crazy by definition (he would have to be crazy to fly combat missions) and since army regulations stipulated that insanity was justification for grounding, a pilot could avoid flight duty by simply asking, but if he asked, he was demonstrating his sanity (anyone who wanted to get out of combat must be sane) and had to keep flying. The label catch-22 suggested that 21 equally pernicious catches preceded it, but it was catch-22 that caught our attention and entered the language as the label for any irrational, circular and impossible situation.