Читать книгу Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day - Harry Oliver - Страница 41

If someone tells you they’ll be back in ‘two shakes of a lamb’s tail’, I wouldn’t advise getting comfortable: it means they will be back very soon. The metaphor is a simple one – an excitable lamb shakes its tail back and forth very quickly. But why a lamb?, you may well ask. Well, that’s a good question. It would appear that it’s because of the perceived indefatigable energy of the frisky lambs, which would have been a common sight in the farm-reliant society in centuries past. In fact the phrase didn’t come into being until the nineteenth century, and nowadays it’s often shortened to ‘two shakes’.

Some related alternatives exist, such as ‘two shakes of the dice’ and ‘three shakes of a lamb’s tail’, but they all mean the same thing and, if nothing else, provide a nice little breather when you need to buy some time for a simple task.