SHAGGY DOG:The World is Your Oyster would suggest to a person that anything is possible and that hard work and careful decisions will lead to great success in the future. It comes, like so many other phrases, from Shakespeare.
In his play The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597), there is an exchange between Falstaff and Pistol in Act 2, Scene ii:
Falstaff: I will not lend thee a penny.
Pistol: Yhy then, the world is mine oyster,
Which I with sword shall open.
A Blue Chip Company, or a Blue Chip Investment, is considered to be the most sought after and reliable. In gaming houses and casinos across the world, players never use cash with which to gamble.
Instead, they lodge their money with a cashier in exchange for chips, so called because they were originally chips of wood, coloured in accordance with their value. These days they are mass-produced plastic discs, although still known as gaming chips.
The blue-coloured chips were initially the highest in value and consequently the most popular and secure.
Ringing the changes is an expression used when someone in authority is announcing a variation, which tends to result in matters being carried out in much the same way as before.
The source of this term can be found in the old English custom of bell ringing in the cathedrals and churches throughout the land.
The 17th century brought about "change ringing" ("changes" being the different order in which certain sets of bells can be rung).
For example, a set of three can be rung in a series of six changes, a set of four can lead to 24 changes, a set of six has 720 changes, and so on, with the big belfries housing 12 bells capable of ringing 479,001,600 changes, which would take the best part of 38 years to complete.
A copper-bottomed agreement or contract is the safest and most reliable you can have. This is another nautical expression deriving from the copper sheathing ship makers used to strengthen boats, wrapping it around the part of a wooden hull that lies below the water line. This would protect a ship from damage from floating debris, coral reefs, rocks and icebergs, unless, of course, it took a direct hit at Full Tilt.
Extracted from Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheepby Albert Jack (Penguin Books)