Writing in 1772, the famed explorer Captain James Cook noted that “to run amok is to … sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage.” Once thought to be the result of possession by evil spirits, the phenomenon later found its way into psychiatric manuals. Amok-derived from the “Amuco,” a band of Javanese and Malay warriors who were known for their penchant for indiscriminate violence-was initially a source of morbid fascination for Westerners.
The saying was popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries, when European visitors to Malaysia learned of a peculiar mental affliction that caused otherwise normal tribesmen to go on brutal and seemingly random killing sprees. “Running amok” is commonly used to describe wild or erratic behavior, but the phrase actually began its life as a medical term. Still yet another theory suggests the phrase was actually born out of the brothels of the American West, and referred to men behaving as though their whole town were a red-light district. The marquis and his pranksters later compensated Melton for the damages, but their drunken escapade is likely the reason that “paint the town red” became shorthand for a wild night out. To top it all off, the mob literally painted a tollgate, the doors of several homes and a swan statue with red paint.
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The bender culminated in vandalism after Waterford and his fellow revelers knocked over flowerpots, pulled knockers off of doors and broke the windows of some of the town’s buildings. In 1837, the Marquis of Waterford-a known lush and mischief maker-led a group of friends on a night of drinking through the English town of Melton Mowbray. The phrase “paint the town red” most likely owes its origin to one legendary night of drunkenness. In the midst of the fight, a wounded British officer named William Inglis supposedly urged his unit forward by bellowing “Stand your ground and die hard … make the enemy pay dear for each of us!” Inglis’ 57th Regiment suffered 75 percent casualties during the battle, and went on to earn the nickname “the Die Hards.” The phrase later became even more popular after 1811’s Battle of Albuera during the Napoleonic Wars.
In its earliest incarnation in the 1700s, the expression described condemned men who struggled the longest when they were executed by hanging.
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While it typically refers to someone with a strong dedication to a particular set of beliefs, the term “diehard” originally had a series of much more literal meanings. Among its many fabrications, the book includes a description of crocodiles that notes, “These serpents sley men, and eate them weeping, and they have no tongue.” While factually inaccurate, Mandeville’s account of weeping reptiles later found its way into the works of Shakespeare, and “crocodile tears” became an idiom as early as the 16th century. The myth dates back as far as the 14th century and comes from a book called “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.” Wildly popular upon its release, the tome recounts a brave knight’s adventures during his supposed travels through Asia. Modern English speakers use the phrase “crocodile tears” to describe a display of superficial or false sorrow, but the saying actually derives from a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears of sadness while they killed and consumed their prey.