The cellar is a great place to be during the hot summer months. Here we are in June and next month will be even hotter, because we live in the Northern Hemisphere. Down we go. It feels ten degrees cooler. Maybe we should stay here until the fall. Let’s pick from the Famous Phrases box this time. I picked last month. It’s your turn.
Aha! “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” How many times have we heard that Famous Phrase? A similar Famous Phrase is “that’s the way the ball bounces.”
Both of these mean there is nothing we can do about the way things happened, especially bad things, so there is no reason to be upset about it.
(Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.)
These expressions became current in America in the mid-twentieth century and quickly spread to the rest of the English-speaking world. Both are built up by alliteration.
(The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer)
Now there’s a big word: alliteration. Alliteration is when words that are close together start with the same letters or the same sounds. In our examples, the Cookie Crumbles and the Ball Bounces.
Fun things to do
- Watch this very short video about these two famous phrases.
- Challenge yourself to complete these alliterations by matching words from the left-hand column with words from the right-hand column
Playful _____________ a) bread
Red ____________ b) kite
Tasty _______________ c) puppy
Pink ________________ d) roses
Buttered ____________ e) toast
Colorful ____________ f) poppies
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