Chickens Come Home To Roost “Curses are like young chickens : they always come home to roost.” —Arabian proverb. This is another way of saying, with Shakespeare, “The evil that men do lives after them ; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Cesar, III. ii). Both are wise sayings ; yet both are only half-truths, and, as such, are dangerous. The sense of our phrase is that, as...

What The Dickens !  The Very Dickens ! “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.” —SHAKESPEARE : The Merry Wives of Windsor, III. These exclamatory phrases signify either indignation, irritation, impatience, or astonishment. In these senses the word “dickens” is generally used with the interrogative pronouns: “what,” “who,” “how,” “when,” “why,” and “where.” Since the time of the great Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens, it has been natural to associate...