When Do We Paint the Town Red?
"Paint the Town Red" "Yellow Belly" "Black Dog of Depression" "Green Thumb"
All interesting phrases of which there are many, many more and I sometimes wonder where they originated and why.
Do you know? Do you have other such phrases and their origins?
Please share with the class.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Unless you’re a professional painter who was hired to create a giant mural of Elmo (let me know how to get that job!), the expression “paint the town red” is figurative. According to the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), the phrase means “ to enjoy oneself flamboyantly ” or “to go on a boisterous or exuberant spree .” But why do we use the verb “paint” for this? And for that matter, why red instead of blue, neon green, or a glittery silver?
Legend has it that “paint the town red” was inspired by an 1837 event that took place in the English town of Melton Mowbray. The story goes that the Marquis of Waterford — who was a noted hooligan — got a little too rowdy with his friends and splattered red paint all over several buildings throughout the town. While it certainly seems like a plausible tale, the etymological origin for the phrase is difficult to confirm.
While it certainly seems like a plausible tale, it’s difficult to confirm as the etymological origin for the phrase. “Paint the town red” didn’t appear in print until nearly five decades later — the March 10, 1882, issue of Stanford, Kentucky’s Semi-Weekly Interior Journal includes the sentence, “He gets on a high old drunk with a doubtful man, and they paint the town red together,” in an article about bribing elected officials. In 1883, The New York Times used the phrase in a political context : “Mr. James Hennessy offered a resolution that the entire body proceed forthwith to Newark and get drunk… to ‘paint the town red.’” Many of the early uses appear to be political in nature and to refer specifically to drunkenness.
Over time, the phrase came to be less inherently associated with politics and booze. Now “painting the town red” is used to describe any form of unbridled revelry, whether real paint is involved or not.
Be civil is really all I ask (oh and follow all the NT rules or Perrie and the mods will get irritated 
)
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Sometimes I wonder about such things.
What color should we paint the town if all we want is peace and quiet?
Dark tropical teal.
I was gonna suggest blue because it's a peaceful color but I like dark tropical teal better
It can be one of those colors that changes with the light. I want to paint our open living & dining room that color.
Not to be confused with the movie, High Plains Drifter, where they painted the town red and renamed it Hell.
Colors
by Shel Silverstein
Pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are greyish blueish green,
But I'm told they look orange in the night.
My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it's silver when it's wet.
And all the colors I am inside
Have not been invented yet.
Colours
by Donovan
In the morning, when we rise,
In the morning, when we rise.
That's the time, that's the time,
I love the best.
In the morning, when we rise,
In the morning, when we rise.
That's the time, that's the time,
I love the best.
In the morning, when we rise,
In the morning, when we rise.
That's the time, that's the time,
I love the best.
When I see her, m-hmm,
When I see her, oh yeah.
That's the time, that's the time,
I love the best.
Without thinking, oh yeah,
Without thinking, m-hmm.
Of the time, of the time,
When I've been loved.
In the morning, when we rise,
In the morning, when we rise.
That's the time, that's the time,
I love the best.
A hitchhiking farmer with a green thumb, was picked up by the boys in blue, because they were envious, like the farmers thumb, of the grass that they smoked on the farm next door that always seemed greener. The farmers' neighbor had a large barn that was used for target practice by the boys in blue, but they rarely hit it. Apparently the bullets bitten before shot at the barn kept travelling right through the barn, via the open door, that the people that lived in the barn, somehow always forgot to shut, as if they lived in a barn, or something.
One dark and dreary evening, the chickens got all clucked up and began to halucinate from some mushrooms they had eight, tillthey ate em all, and with that, they all thought they saw, a Led Zeppelin crash in that envious field causing the crows to yield as it crashed right upon a Black Dog, leaving quite a depression in the soft earth. After the Dred Zep rolled over the black dog, the black dog was rolled over and found to have a yellow belly, as the black dog was known to drink a lot, it was easy to Spot, the yellow belly of jaundice that had set in after too many nights out painting the town red about the next day, as he halucinazations were all washed away like brains, washed yet not dried like raisin your goose to take a gander at the geese that wore fleece, as they were trying to goose some fowl bitch with jaundice, or, so the story goes, to hell in a handbasket that i'll weave along the way, hope i don't get pulled over for weavin, or is it weaver, cause he's a cocky chicken that had it coming, in fact, it was over Perdue, cause it takes a tuff man to violate a tender chick end the
Hey, this is Agent Orange of the writer assassin's guild. We need to take you downtown and defoliate you and get your statement.
and paint it red again...?
No, I won't take you to the red light district.
Why not?
Roxanne
You don't have to put on the red light
Those days are over
You don't have to sell your body to the night
Roxanne Lyrics by Sting
That song always makes me giggle
A very long time ago when I lived in NM, I was in a medieval recreation group and we had a stuffed sheep as a mascot that we'd keep naming when we got quite inebriated. We'd always forget the name the next day until we finally got to Roxanne and started singing that song -
Roxanne... You don't have to put on the red bow.
Those days are over.
You don't have to walk the pasture for money...
Yes, we were (and still are) very silly.
I still think the best version of that song that I've heard was when Jacek Koman (The Unconscious Argentinean) sang it in Moulin Rouge!
Not exactly how I thought the comments would flow, but I am glad folks had a little fun with the topic.
Thanks.
LINK -> Green with Envy | Phrase Definition, Origin & Examples