Sometimes we hear or see some common expression, and wonder how they began.

Here are just a few of the best known, taken from Marvin Vanonils book, Great Expressions, published a little more than 15 years ago.

These quotes are referred to as "anecdotes," although the word refers to sayings that haven't been published. The following quotes have been published.

We may tell a friend some juicy gossip or a "good story." In ancient Greece people liked to whisper a bit of juicy gossip to their friends as a favorite pastime. Such confidential tidbits were called "anekdotos" from an and elecdotos or "not published." Most of them, however, have been published.

To make both ends meet

Sailing ships in the 16th and 17th centuries were complex. Large ships had many masts and a complicated system of sails. Each sail was raised and lowered separately and involved hundreds of ropes.

Ship owners told their captains that when a rope broke, they preferred to pull broken rope ends together and splice them. A piece of rigging was stretched to the limit in order for both ends to meet.

Landlubbers took over the phrase, "To make both ends meet." This entered the speech of non-sailers, to mean living within one's income, however meager.

A flash in the pan

American frontiersmen hunted game under conditions that would puzzle modern hunters. Their crude flintlock guns were a big handicap. When the trigger was pulled, friction between the steel and flint might make a spark, and it might not.

Even a strong spark did not guarantee that the gun would fire. It was equipped with a shallow pan in which a trail of gunpowder led from the flint to the charge. Dampness or rough handling frequently broke the thin line of powder. In these cases there was a flash of light, but the gun didn't fire. The phase "flash in the pan" came to stand for any quick and dazzling failure.

Who is a snob?

The word is from the Scottish "snab", meaning "boy or servant." College students in England were at one time all members of the nobility--and applied "snab" in the sense of "servant" to the townsmen. The word "snab" was changed to "snob" in the 1600s when Cambridge University decided to admit commoners as students. Cambridge required that when registering, students describe their social position with the Latin words Sine Nobilitate, meaning "without nobility." The students abbreviated this to "S. Nob." When spoken, this abbreviation seemed so much light the word "snob," it came to be written "snob" and was used to signify a commoner who wished to mingle with the nobles.

What was the Iron Curtain?

Winston Churchill first used the term, Iron Curtain, in 1945. He was referring to the difficulty of getting reliable information about what was happening in Eastern Europe. He used the phrase is 1946 in his famous speech at Fulton, Mo.

Dr. A.O. Goldsmith of Kennett is a retired director of the School of Journalism, Louisiana State University.