Phrasal verbs, idioms and sayings for Halloween

♦ witch-hunt - to go on a witch-hunt is to try and find and punish or harass people with unpopular opinions, usually because they are said to be dangerous to others.
 

♦ skeleton in the cupboard – a skeleton in the cupboard is something that might bring shame or embarrassment to a family or person if other people know about it.  

♦ spirit away – to spirit away something or somebody (or spirit something or somebody away), is to remove something or someone from a place quickly, secretly and mysteriously.
 

♦ makes one’s blood boil – if something makes your blood boil, it makes you angry. 

♦ out for one’s blood / after one’s blood – to be out for someone’s blood is to be determined to get revenge.

♦ put / stick the knife in – to do or say something very unpleasant or very unkind to someone.

♦ look daggers at – to look daggers at someone, is to look at them with hatred or anger.

♦ a night owl – a night owl is someone who likes being awake and active at night.  

♦ not a cat in hell’s chance – no chance at all. 

♦ scare the pants off someone - to scare the pants off someone is to frighten them a great deal

♦ Bedlam (noun) – uproar and confusion. 

♦ freak out – to freak out is to experience strong emotions and become excited or disturbed, or very angry or very upset. 

♦ ward off – if you ward off something unpleasant, you stop it from harming you or coming near to you.

ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland’s potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.