Similar to “if you put a gun to my head I guess I’d say…” Does the phrase in the thread title specifically refer to death by weights?
They are just a travel agency though, nothing to indicate their sources.
press, v.
From Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the 4th definition is
From The Free Dictionary, the 5th definition:
Unless anyone has evidence of a direct connection, it looks to me as though the connection with the method of torture is indirect at best.
Some of their other phrase origins strike me as pretty dubious. For example, the explanation they give for “fortnight” is way more contrived than simply pointing out that a “fortnight” is a shortening of “fourteen nights.”
And the explanation they give for “the whole nine yards”
has been rebutted by Cecil (see near the bottom).
Well, if you can’t trust a travel agency then I don’t know where we’ll find an answer.
Most of these are out-and-out wrong. For instance:
“'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” is exactly what they say is incorrect.
“Bloody” – the OED specifically states it has nothing to do with “By God’s blood” or anything like that, since those phrases have never been used as a curse. It also wasn’t used as an expletive until the 19th century, long after that sort of blasphemy had ended.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ – the origin given is nonsense. Why on Earth would cats and dogs be up on the roof to get warm, when a fire (or the master’s bed) made more sense?
‘Rule of thumb’ – ah, yes. The old, thoroughly discredited “beat your wife with a stick no bigger than your thumb” story. There is no evidence this is true (though the phrase’s origin is not clear).
‘Mind your P’s and Q’s’ – no definite explanation
“Dead ringer” – it has nothing to do with the bells sometimes included in coffins to prevent being buried alive. In this case, “dead” means “exact”; a “dead ringer” comes from horse racing, where you’d secretly substitute a better horse (a “ringer”) for the one entered in the race. A “dead ringer” was one that looked exactly the same.
‘Goodnight, sleep tight’ – the phrase first appeared in 1898, long after Shakespeare.
Fortnight – The OED clearly lists “fourteen nights” as the origin, and since there was also “sennight” (i.e., seven nights) for one week, it’s pretty certain they’re right.
The page gets a couple of origins correct, but far too many are just urban legends that have been debunked time and time again. These are akin to Michael Moorcock’s saying that the streets of New York city were so narrow that people had to walk sideways, and that’s the origin of the phrase, “The sidewalks of New York.”
Ditto. Is it really so difficult to explain “to press someone” as meaning “to pressure someone”?
OTOH, I suppose some people might have a really low threshold for what counts as “torture”…
It’s a fairly common older idiom - I mean, a man who “pressed his suit” with a lady wasn’t torturing her for a yes.
Now was he engaging in a spot of laundry 
What they say for that is very close to what I had heard.
No mention of welding, but rather a form that held the bottom of a stack of cannon balls, tather like a rack for pool balls (but shorter, as it didn’t come halfway up the first ball), that was called a “monkey”. All metals will shrink or expand as heated or cooled, but brass does so more than most, so as it gets colder, the monkey will shrink, until eventually it becomes small enough that the balls stacked on top of it pop off.
I have often seen it cited as a phrase that sounds dirty, but isn’t.
Juxtaposed often with “hung up in traffic”, which sounds fairly innocent, but is a reference to copulating dogs.
No.
It isn’t even really a figure of speech. Asking for an answer again and again is called “pressing”.
“He tried to ignore the question, but when pressed he admitted the whole affair” does not mean the man was tortured, but aggressively questioned.
I am a little surprised at the question, as I hadn’t realized the term had fallen into disuse. The idea that someone might be an adult and native speaker of English and never said “I pressed him for more information” seems very alien to me.
Also, as far as I’m aware no-one ever used pressing to elicit confessions, as the travel agents say. Only pleas. It was for those who refused to plead at all. Just saying “not guilty” would be enough to stop the torture without confessing.
To elicit confessions, they used the dreaded Comfy Chair.
‘Pressed’ had another meaning in the 18th and 19th centuries. Naval ships were always short of sailors in wartime, and it was quite legal to send out a press gang to round up any likely men and boys ashore. If they passed the medical - ie if they could stand upright when sober, and didn’t have any obviously contagious disease - they became seamen.
How about “the impressment of seamen”?
How about it?