Cloudcuckooland

Reading teaches me things (duh, but that's what this post is about so I began this paragraph thus).

While I was reading one of my mysteries, set in post-Victorian England, and the phrase: "He's living in cloud cuckoo land" was used. I got pretty excited because this is also the title of the debut album of a group called The Lightening Seeds. I searched extensively for this album as a surprise for Cameron.

I also can't help but be excited about learning a new phrase or meaning of a phrase. Such a word worm!

For Your Information:

Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an (unrealistically) idealistic state where everything is perfect. ("You're living in Cloud-cuckoo-land.") It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.

Here are some more!

If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain--

an English phrase usually interpreted as "if one cannot get one's own way, one must bow to the inevitable".

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip-- an old English proverb. It can mean that between the time we decide to do something and the time we do it, things often go wrong.

Dead to rights-- To be caught red-handed, in the very act of committing a crime or error. It implies that there is no possible way for a person to explain away their mistake or crime

Great Scott!--There was a famous American general named Scott, who did have the title of commander-in-chief of the US Army at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, though he is best known as one of the two American heroes of the Mexican War of 1846-48. Oft times soldiers used their commanding officer's name as an oath.

This General Winfield Scott, known to his troops as Old Fuss and Feathers. (This piece goes on to say that he was a very heavy man later on in life and could not ride a horse and so a great Scott in a literal meaning of the phrase)

I find this particularly amusing because I use the phrase fuss and feathers as my reation when my kids are overreacting to something.