“Close, But No Cigar!”

I remember plenty of family picnics in the 1950s. After the eating was over the adult male relatives would gather round the picnic table, break out frosty bottles of Schlitz beer, light up cigars, and commence to play penny ante poker.

But seriously, how many people smoke cigars today? Nevertheless, “Close, but no cigar!” is an idiom that still has currency today and is as instantly understood in the way as it has been for more than a century.

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“Keystone Cops”

They’re wild, they’re zany. They are more than a hundred years old. They come from a time before women had the right to vote and cars had to be hand-cranked to start. And yet the Keystone Cops live on, at least as a figure of speech.

The Keystone Cops
The Keystone Cops.

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