Читать книгу Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day - Harry Oliver - Страница 17

A ‘bolt from the blue’ is a complete surprise. The blot is a lightning bolt and the blue is the sky. Normally we expect lightning to strike only from a very dark, stormy sky, so a bolt that shoots to earth on a clear day would come as a real surprise. Although the phrase was probably around in everyday speech some years before, it was first recorded in writing in 1837. ‘Arrestment, sudden as a bolt out of the blue, has hit strange victims,’ wrote Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution.