sayings - what do these MEAN?

no. not balls as in testicles. balls atop the throttle in fighter planes. pushed up to the cockpit wall...full speed ahead!

unscrupulous racehorse owners have a fast horse and a slow horse that are nearly identical in appearance. they run the slow horse until the betting odds reached the desired level, then they substitute the ringer, who can run much faster. dead in this case means abrupt or exact, like in dead stop, or dead shot.

old time political campaigns would attempt to gain supporters with what amounted to a small parade including a band for a candidate with sufficient support. jumping on the bandwagon was akin to providing your support for this popular candidate.

this phrase originated with the roman empire. roman soldiers used to wash the walls of a newly-conquered town or city with the blood of the vanquished. this was usually accomplished with a great degree of gusto, hence the term being applied to a great night on the town.

dr. smart-allick was a character in 'the new boy at narkover', by j.b. morton. morton was a british humorist and writer.

thomas drummond in 1816 devised a lighting source for theatres. it was a cylinder of lime heated by an incandescence flame and placed behind a lens for in front of a reflector. these "lime lights" were very bright. thus the star performer was very visible as long as he stood in it.

a bombard is a leather jug which holds 8 pints or 4 quarts. a full bombard of ale would make you drunk.

in colonial america (and, presumably in europe as well) the beds were not of the box spring variety that we enjoy today. the mattress laid on top of a web of ropes. there was a tool - an iron type of gadget that looked somewhat like an old clothes pin but larger - which was used to tighten the ropes when they became too slack. thus, the expression "sleep tight."

this term which means saved at the last possible moment derives from when people were buried with a bell above ground and a string in their coffin. this was just in case someone happened to be buried alive, they could ring the bell to notify others.

or slater, zach, kelly, lisa, jesse.

this idiom means 'you are not popular'. while escaping after shooting president lincoln, john wilkes booth broke his leg. the doctor that gave him medical attention was dr. samuel mudd. at the time, mudd had no idea that booth had committed the murder. dr. mudd was unfairly convicted of being a conspirator to booth.

means to grin and bear a painful situation. it comes from the days before anaesthetics. A soldier about to undergo an operation was given a bullet to bite.

originally the saying was spick and span new. A span was a wood shaving. if something was newly built it would have tell-tale wood chips so it was 'span new' spick is an old word for a nail. new spicks or nails would be shiny. however words and phrases often change their meanings over centuries and spick and span came to mean neat and tidy.

prince edward, later edward VI, had a boy who was whipped in his place every time he was naughty.

what's he doing in there? how, exactly, do you get "in" details?