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ORIGIN: He’s only interested in hair splitting, not real discussion. William Shakespeare used an expression similar to this in about 1600 in one of his plays, and splitting hairs has been widely used since the late 1600s. When the saying originated, it was thought to be impossible to split anything as fine as a hair. start from scratch начать с нуля M E A N I N G : to go back to the beginning I built every bit of my own house. I started from scratch and did everything with my own hands. ORIGIN: The scratch is the starting line in races. steal someone’s thunder перебежать дорогу к л M E A N I N G : to spoil the effect of someone’s actions or words by doing the same or better first He was looking forward to telling his family the news and was annoyed to find that his cousin had phoned them and stolen his thunder. ORIGIN: The expression was first used by an English playwright called John Dennis who lived at the beginning of the 18th century. For one of his plays he invented a way to create the noise of thunder. Although the play itself was a disaster and soon closed, everyone loved the thunder sound effect. It was used by others so much that Dennis said, “Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder.” steer clear of someone / something держаться подальше; обходить стороной M E A N I N G : to avoid Bill is mad at me, so I’ve been steering clear of him. ORIGIN: The analogy in this phrase is to driving a car or boat and circling around something or someone to avoid 121