"A load off my mind" and other expressions that are older than they appear

[hogarth]

I remember being surprised to learn that Homer was singing about people “biting the dust” (in the Iliad) thousands of years before Freddie Mercury.

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

According to this site, Dickens also gave us:

[ul]
[li]abuzz[/li][li]the creeps[/li][li]devil-may-care[/li][li]flummox[/li][li]on the rampage[/li][li]sawbones[/li][li]whiz-bang[/li][/ul]

[BrotherCadfael]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

Interesting. My take’s a little different. I’d guess the majority of “modern” people are well aware that the folks of the 19th century didn’t all (or always) speak in precise high-class English. If nothing else, the two best-known English-speaking authors of the 1800s would arguably be Dickens and Twain, who did an excellent job of recording and celebrating the speech of the common people.

So Temujin, for example, was more likely to say something like, “Happy birthday, Ma!” than “I greet you, my mother, on this the anniversary of your birth.”