Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Safe as houses

I just had the weirdest moment while reading The Shining. I'm reading along (quite enjoying it, by the way), when suddenly a character refers to the hotel as "safe as houses". What! If you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel, you will know that "safe as houses" is one of the many uncommon phrases used in the Buffyverse, and I always assumed that Joss Whedon made it up. Apparently not. So now I don't know if Stephen King made it up, or if it was legitimately something people used to say, and it just fell out of common usage. Either way, it was a bit of a "holy cow!" moment for a huge Buffy fan like myself.

2 comments:

  1. O-K. VERY standard British English phrase. Older than dirt. I'm not sure how it got started, though.

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  2. Wow, that's so weird! I googled it and saw some stuff about the origin of the phrase, but it didn't say how old it was or where in the world it was from.

    As for how it got started, apparently it's just because houses were considered safe places to be, and also it evolved to mean that investing in houses is a safe investment, haha. I miss believing that Joss Whedon invented it. :(

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