My students know I am a fan of word and phrase etymologies, so they routinely ask me from where words and phrases stem. One of my favorites is “happy as a clam” because it’s one that mystifies the students.
From what I have been told and read, the original phrase was “happy as a clam at high tide” when the clams are safe from their predators. As people often do, they shortened the phrase and it lost the obviousness of its origin, how it came to mean content. Read the rest of this entry »
