... Something wicked this way comes - Shakespeare idioms

Cafe Society
1

“By the pricking of my thumbs”, Act 4, scene 1 of Macbeth.

All definitions I could find basically say it means a foreboding, then reference Macbeth. Was that a saying before Shakespeare or was it just something he made up because it sounded cool and rhymed?

One online source claimed it was because the second witch has a tingling sensation in her thumbs. But “pricking of” seems to be a verb, not a tingling.

(yes, I’m at work - the ONLY one here - and I’m bored)

2

I didn’t recognize this as a Shakespeare idiom at all. Instead I thought of the Ray Bradbury novel:

3

Well, it can be just as much a noun as a tingling, only more painful.

4

In the early 17th century James V! routinely tortured women to ‘prove’ that they were witches. His book, Daemonologie is said to have inspired elements of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It includes insights into necromancy, witchcraft and sorcery.

  • The search for the ‘Devil’s Mark’ however, a branding bestowed upon anyone who’d made a pact with the Devil, was enacted in Scotland. It involved an invasive search of the body and ‘pricking’ – using pins to find a spot that was blemished or insensitive, sometimes carried out by specialist “witch-prickers”.
5

Thank you for that link. That seems to make sense.