Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
Perception is a wish fulfilled. Aloha 
I’ve always taken a moot point as something that’s ONLY good for discussion…
As in - should I buy an Aventador or a SuperSports?
Well it’s a moot point because I don’t have $1,000,000 - and even if I did I wouldn’t spend it on a car.
That’s my understanding of the term too - it’s another way of saying “This discussion is purely academic or theoretical in nature”.
Ah, so the problem is with one specific bad lyricist whose work happens to be popular. Merci.
I had always understood it as anger, but it does work with your interpretation. As Mr. Congreve is long deceased (Several centuries) we can’t ask which he meant. 
You could say it just slipped between the cracks.
Except that’s not true; the solid part is between the cracks; if it had hit that instead of one of those cracks on either side, it’d still be right here.
Not really. The contextual use of “Pick yourself up by your bootstraps” is to strive to better yourself by your own efforts, even if modest, and use their results to fuel further improvements. Sort of the converse of the maxim about giving a man a fish - “Buy a fish and you eat today; pay to learn to fish and you eat for life”
Reading between the lines, the folks referred to likely are relying on public assistance and not making an effort to shift for themselves.
It is also worth noting that the “boot” your computer does on start-up is short for “bootstrap” - it automatically loads a small kernal of information that tells it how to find and load more until it can “act smart.” :rolleyes:
The -origin- is tall tales centering around the high boots worn in previous times, which were hard to pull on and had straps or loops at the top to help with donning - “I pulled so hard I lifted myself by my own bootstraps”
I alway heard that one as “Slipped through/fell through the cracks” - different regionalism, I guess.
FWIW, I just now googled slipped and cracks, and while your phrasing was the first result, mine was the second; I’m seventh, you’re eighth; et cetera. (Checking for fall and cracks, your regionalism takes the top two; mine comes in third and fifth.)
There’s also “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”.
In fairness, I think that when that lyricist wrote his metrical version of the 23rd, the verb “to want” was clearly understood as being intransitive in the context where it was used; it’s just that usage has marched on and now it is no longer plain that “I’ll not want” is meant to mean “I shall not be in want of anything”.
I never liked “Best thing since sliced bread.” When I first heard it, I thought the saying was used ironically to mock useless inventions. Give me fresh bread over sliced bread any day.
I’ll admit that sliced bread is nice for toast, since uniform thickness leads to a similar result with a specific toasting time.
Depends on the flies.
Drosophila melanogaster likes vinegar just fine - it smells like the spoiled fruit they like to lay eggs in.
Growing up, some wags would respond to the admonition with “And you catch even more with bull$#!+” 
Wow! Thanks. I love how history can leave fossils in language that way.
Well, until you get down to the last atom. Then if you divide it you get an explosion. Or you can use the last atom to make homeopathic compounds. That could be another way to have infinite cake.
That’s always what I think when I hear the phrase. Especially, for some reason, when my grandmother used to say it.
Due to an improptu experiment brought to us courtesy of Yllaria, I can inform you that the size of a chunk of sausage that’s able to go up one’s nose is larger than the researchers had previously believed possible.
What part of your body is a teacup?
I’m wondering if there’s an element of trying to avoid a double negative.
“I could not care less” - wait, does that mean I care more? 
I knew I should have thrown in an emoticon.
Aloha
I’ve always thought the point of this is that you shouldn’t risk what you have for a bigger prize that might not pay off. Presumably the bird you have in your hand is alive and unhurt, and would presumably fly away if you shift your attention (and hand) to catching the two that are in the bush.
I’m not sure when such a scenario would ever play out IRL, unless you keep chickens of which three have escaped. And like most proverbs it seems to have its opposite–nothing ventured nothing gained. (Or nothing venture nothing have.)
In proverbs and idioms the word “want” often has its older connotation of “need” and can seem a bit of a non sequitur to those more accustomed to the word in the sense of “desire” or “wish”.