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Share your setting's versions of common real world idioms like "bite the bullet" and "dime a dozen," if you have any. If you do have unique ones, share one (or more) of your favorites and explain its origin.
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I'll start with a one of my own. Instead of "the straw that broke the camel's back," my world's version of the idiom is "the thorn that tipped Caranno's scales.

Caranno is one of the more important gods in my setting by nature of his being the patron father of one of the two most powerful empires on Akris. He's the most commonly worshipped god in the Philotite human empire, and he has considerable sway in other non-human nations thanks to the Watchers of Caranno (think a holy military that fights demons and monsters).

The Philotites are my stand-in for normal modern humans, by the way. There are a few other "human" races like the Sikvar and the Arthmorrans, each with their own quirks that make them not Homo sapiens. The Sikvar (Homo silva) are tuned to the forest they live in and the Arthmorrans (Homo diuturnus) are their own can of worms.

Back to the Philotites, Caranno is also the god of justice and mercy, and his symbol is a set of golden balance scales wreathed in silver thorns. He's not exactly a nice god ("granting Caranno's Mercy" is another idiom in my setting, and it's used instead of saying you've killed something.) He is an important one, though, since he unequivocally made the humans (each race in my setting was made by a specific god in his/her own image) and the Watchers of Caranno have a very justified existence.

The origin of my setting's idiom comes from what his symbol represents. The balance scales symbolize Caranno's dual nature of being the god of mercy and the god of justice. The thorns symbolize sins (repented and unrepented) committed by the people he judges. Get too many metaphorical thorns on the wrong side of the scales and Caranno will decide you deserve justice instead of mercy.

"The thorn that tipped Caranno's scales" started off as a reference to the concept that a person can commit one unrepented sin too many and rack up enough thorns to tip the scales against them, making Caranno punish them instead of having mercy on them.

Over the centuries it became a catchall that functions the same way as our world's "straw that broke the camel's back" and it now means the same thing.

Comments

"Settler's feet are always wet" is a rough equivalent to "everything worth doing is hard".

This comes from the fact that new planets and habs often go through stages of constant rain as the atmosphere and water cycle are gradually getting dialled in.

"Like a bag of crumbs" = Undesirable/useless/inappropriate/not trying hard enough. Space farers have to be extremely conscientious of hygiene and waste. Crumbs getting into the system means you have not been doing enough to stay tidy. It also refers to the revived traditions of food gifting. If you gave someone crumbs rather than a nice bag of various foodstuffs while meeting during a rare rendezvous they'd be understandably insulted.

"Kill the cat" = Somewhere between "kill the golden goose" and "cutting off your nose to spite your face". I.e doing something dumb that'll come back to haunt you for no reason.

"Cat" is an umbrella term for a number of unrelated organisms whose unifying characteristic is being flexible, temperamental, soft and always on the hunt for potential pests.

The most common "cat" looks like a serval with the fur of a mole and even more hyper mobile limbs in order to squeeze through absolutely every crevasse possible.

Without your ship cat you'll eventually get rats and eventually a very fiery meeting between fuel line and insulation.

"Runs like polish".

"Bad news/guilty people/trouble is fast". "Polish" is a euphemism for moonshine brewed by senior members of the life support crew somewhere in the bowels of their extensive machinery. It's one of those extremely pernicious habits that are as undesirable as they're impossible to fully root out. Polish is usually flavored with whatever's on hand, turned into a gel for easier handling and put into mylar pouches. At 80-93% ABV you usually don't need much to get pretty wrecked pretty fast.

Hope that wasn't too long.

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[A Rose and Silver Thorns]

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