What does “wolf in sheep’s clothing” mean? The idiom comes from hens who get agitated when you try to collect their eggs. Southerners tend to say madder than a wet hen in these types of situation, which has the same meaning. And, on the other side of things, a person who likes to make trouble or cause a commotion is someone who “stirs up a hornet’s nest,” leaving everyone behind them to get stung. These social insects get aggressive when they feel threatened and use their stings to kill prey and defend their nests. Hornets are large wasps that live in communal nests. If someone is mad as a hornet, they are extremely angry or furious. In the “Epilogue to The Merchant’s Tale,” he wrote: “In wommen been! for ay as bisy as bees.” And, still today, women skillfully master the busyness behind this idiom. It comes from The Canterbury Tales, written between 13. We can credit Geoffrey Chaucer for the simile busy as a bee. The idiom busy as a bee is typically used as a compliment to acknowledge someone’s accomplishments and the fact that they worked hard to get them. The opposite of slothful snails is energetic and hardworking busy bees. Even Shakespeare couldn’t deal with that inefficient person in his (or her?) life. We don’t know who first made this observation, but Shakespeare used variations of the simile slow as a snail in several of his plays. And, what about someone who still uses “snail mail”. Waiting for someone to do something can be downright excruciating, especially if they move at the speed of a snail. This self-explanatory idiom is far from a compliment. When someone moves very slowly, we say they’re moving at a snail’s pace. Guess that’s why there’s no such thing as dog love. Adult dogs are more discerning and exhibit likes and dislikes for people and other dogs. The term comes from the pure affection puppies lavish on humans. But, puppy love is intense, and even as an adult we’re sure you remember early crushes with fondness (and embarrassment).

These feelings of love or affection are innocent and temporary and often dismissed by adults. When children or teens develop a crush on, or become infatuated with, someone, it’s called puppy love. So, take a ride with us down a zoomorphic path of animal characteristics we use to describe certain types of people. The term comes from the Greek words zōon, which means “animal,” and morphē, which means “form or shape.” Zoomorphism also includes assigning animal-like qualities to gods and inanimate objects. You might, for example, say my teenage son “eats like a horse,” meaning he’s a growing boy and consumes a lot of food. This is called anthropomorphism. Similarly, we also describe people using animal characteristics. We often attribute emotions and other human characteristics to animals.

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