What would Halloween be without a touch of the macabre? So in the true spirit of All Hallows' Eve, we’ve dug up the grim origins of some of our most common expressions.  

Premature burial was once a very real possibility. ‘Saved by the bell’ – when a last minute intervention saves you from disaster – is thought to derive from the 17th century practice of morticians tying a bell to the toe or finger of a corpse. So if not actually dead, the ‘body’ could ring it inside the coffin and hopefully be dug up.

The saying ‘Money for old rope’, which means an easy way to make cash, may have been an ancient term for when the hangman’s noose was sold to the crowds as a memento after a public execution.

‘Warts and all’ supposedly alludes to puritan Oliver Cromwell’s request to be painted exactly the way he was, without any flattering retouches.

To ‘have your guts for garters’ – with its lovely rhythmic alliteration – means a threat of a serious reprisal. This began in the Middle Ages, when disembowelment was a common form of torture and execution.

It’s also been suggested that ‘A skeleton in the closet’ – a secret source of shame which a person or family makes efforts to conceal – comes from the notorious, pre-19^th century body snatcher era, when doctors needing cadavers to examine concealed illegally acquired skeletons in cupboards.

‘Between the devil and the deep blue sea’ could point to the bygone practice of ‘paying’ in wooden ships. This was the dangerous task of using hot tar to waterproof the beams on the deck of a boat – between the ‘devil’ (the large wooden beam that supported the deck) and the ship's side. The process involved lengths of rotten rope that rained hemp fibre into your eyes and burning hot tar all over your body – as well as the possibility of being thrown overboard by the rolling ship.