beer and skittles Fun and games, amusement and pleasure. This British expression stems from the days when skittles, a game akin to ninepins, was often played in alleys adjacent to country inns. The phrase usually appears negatively in expressions such as Life is not all beer and skittles. In Pickwick Papers, Dickens used the phrase porter and skittles.

cakes and ale Pleasure and good times, with connotations of carousing and self-indulgence. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the puritanical Malvolio is reproached by the bibulous Sir Toby Belch:

Somerset Maugham used the phrase as the title of his 1930 satirical novel of the lives of two writers, presumably Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole.

cock-a-hoop See ELATION.

cut a caper To perform a spirited, frolicsome dance step; to behave in a playful, frisky manner. Caper is said to derive from the Italian capra ‘she-goat’; thus, cut a caper alludes to the frisky, erratic movements of goats. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (I, iii), a dialogue between Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek lends credence to this explanation. Sir Toby’s response to the claim that Sir Andrew can “cut a caper” plays on the allusion to a goat by reference to a sheep.

Today the figurative use is more common, shifting the emphasis from the actual dance step to similarly frolicsome and frisky behavior.

dance the antic hay To lead a hectic, pleasure-seeking life; to be a jet-setter, a hedonist. The hay was a lively English dance, somewhat like a reel. In an antic hay, the dancers wore masks of animal faces and moved with grotesque, uncouth gestures. The emphasis was on lustful and lecherous behavior.

high jinks Unrestrained revelry; unbounded merrymaking; mischievous fun. High jinks was originally a 17th-century game in which a person, according to his dice throw, had to gulp down a drink, imitate a famous person, or perform some other prescribed task.

kick up one’s heels To frolic, gambol, or make merry; to enjoy one-self, to have fun. This self-evident expression may be related to either heelkicking or kick-up, 18th-century terms denoting a dance. Since dancing is often associated with merriment and high spirits, the activity became synonymous with the mood.

kill the fatted calf To rejoice or celebrate; to indulge in jubilant merrymaking; to entertain sumptuously. This expression’s Biblical origin lies in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 23):

a night on the tiles An evening of carousing and merrymaking; a night on the town; a high old time. This British colloquialism comes by analogy with cats’ nocturnal reveling and caterwauling on the tile rooftops of city dwellings.

paint the town red To carouse, go on a riotous spree; to take part in a reckless and boisterous celebration. This U.S. slang expression appears as early as 1884 in the Boston Journal:

Why red?

This tongue-in-cheek exhortation plays with the fact that red is the color at the extreme end of the visible spectrum, which perhaps accounts for its association with extremes or immoderation. However, red symbolizes many things, including passion, violence, and promiscuity, to name a few, and there is no evidence to verify that one explanation is more correct than another.

pub-crawl To move from one nightspot to another on a drinking bout; to barhop. This expression is commonplace in Great Britain, where pub is a shortening of public house ‘bar, tavern.’ The expression implies that the reveler will dawdle at each drinking-hole and that he may be moving on all fours before the evening is over.

red-letter day Any day marked by a memorable, happy, or significant event. The Calendar of the Book of Common Prayer, as well as other liturgical calendars, marked festival and holy days in red, a practice retained on many secular calendars which designate Sundays and holidays in similar fashion. Figurative application to any noteworthy day dates from the 18th century.

see the elephant To do the town, to visit the “big city”; to see the world, especially its seamy side. This American colloquialism probably stems from an old ballad that tells of a farmer whose horse was knocked over by a circus elephant as the two animals tried to pass each other on a narrow road. Though the horse was injured, and the milk and eggs which were to be sold at the market were ruined, the farmer took solace in the thought that at least he had seen the elephant. In common usage, the expression is usually employed somewhat facetiously.

sow wild oats See PROMISCUOUSNESS.

tear up the pea patch To go on a wild spree, to go on a rampage. According to Wentworth and Flexner (A Dictionary of American Slang), baseball announcer “Red” Barber popularized this expression in his broadcasts of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ baseball games (approx. 1945-55). An analogous Americanism is go on a tear.

trip the light fantastic To dance; to frolic or make merry. This expression is derived from John Milton’s L’Allegro (1631):

Thus, trip the light fantastic combines trip, from the Middle English trippen ‘to step lightly,’ with light fantastic, converted into a noun phrase by the omission of toe but retaining its original reference to movements of dancing.