FiVe EnGLiSh eXpReSSiOn

1. Take the gilt off the gingerbread - deprive something of (some of) its attractive qualities
Gingerbread, a cake spiced with ginger, was often sold in toy shapes, especially as a flat human figure, covered or ornamented with either real or more usually imitation gilt. It was a metaphor for anything showy but insubstantial as early as Elizabethan days. The idea of taking off the gilt to reveal something less valuable developed in the 19th century, perhaps as a result of the popularity of gingerbread stalls at country fairs.

2. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion
This expression referred originally to Caesar's second wife Pompeia. According to rumours circulating in about 62BC, it seems that her name was linked with Publius Clodius, a notorious dissolute man of the time. Caesar did not believe such rumours but he made it clear, when divorcing her, that even Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. The expression like Caesar's wife also comes from this account, to refer to someone who is pure and honest in morals.

3. Mountain will not come to Mohammed, if the
Mohammed (570-632 AD) was the founder of Islam, the Muslim religion. If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain advises swallowing one's pride in order to take the initiative is something. The story behind the saying is that when people asked Mohammed to give miraculous proof of his teaching he ordered a mountain to move towards him; when it did not do so he used the incident as a lesson that God had spared them from destruction by the mountain, and he went to it to offer thanks for God's mercy. The story first appeared in English in Francis Bacon's Essays ('On Boldness', 1625) to illustrate boldness in an orator or leader, not with the interpretation now placed on it.

4. Warm the cockles of one's heart - be very gratifying
The cockles of the heart are simply the heart itself and, metaphorically, one's deepest feelings. The word cockles is used either as a comparison of the shape of the heart with that of a cockleshell, or because the zoological name for cockle is 'cardium' - related to the Greek for heart, as in 'cardiac' - or because the Latin name for the ventricles of the heart is 'cochleae cordis' (the first word of which means snail-shells) because of their appearance. This last explanation sounds the most likely.

5. Fiddle while Rome burns - occupy oneself with something unimportant while a crisis remains unattended to
The great fire of Rome (64 AD) gave the Emperor Nero (37-68 AD) and his city-planners an unparalleled opportunity to rebuild. Included in the plans were a fabulous villa and pleasure park for Nero, the Golden House (64-68 AD), which gave rise to rumours that Nero had started the fire himself in order to clear the site and had moreover celebrated it with music. It is true that he had artistic pretensions and was certainly capable both of initiating the catastrophe and of being insensitive to the suffering it caused, but if the story is true - some historians have argued that he was not in Rome at the time - he would have played a lyre (forerunner of the modern violin and used as an accompaniment to song), not a fiddle.