Food idioms, explained

Tracking expressions

By Culinate staff

September 13, 2010

Who doesn’t love a food idiom? Now, from Lisa Bramen on a Smithsonian blog, comes the origins of a few favorites: “Apple of my eye,” “not worth his salt,” and “spilling the beans.”

The definition of one more, “sowing his wild oats,” is attributed to another blogger, who says the expression is 500 years old. Says Bramen:

“(It) refers to the worthlessness of wild oats (the probable precursor to cultivated oats) as a cereal crop. Therefore, a young man who sows wild oats is — ahem — spreading seeds without purpose, or otherwise pursuing idle pastimes.”