{"id":18110,"date":"2019-07-31T16:36:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T16:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18110"},"modified":"2019-07-31T16:36:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T16:36:56","slug":"between-four-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18110","title":{"rendered":"Between Four Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/foureyes.gif\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" alt=\"Illustration of the Swedish phrases mellan fyra \u00f6gon (between four eyes)\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\"><\/p>\n<p>I learnt this week that in Swedish if you say that something is &#8220;between four eyes&#8221; &#8211; <strong>mellan fyra \u00f6gon<\/strong> &#8211; it means that it is known just to you and the person you&#8217;re speaking to, and should be kept  secret.<\/p>\n<p>Equivalent expressions in English include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is (just) between you and me\/I<\/li>\n<li>Keep it under your hat<\/li>\n<li>This is between you, me and the post \/ gatepost \/ fencepost \/ bed-post \/ lampost \/ wall<\/li>\n<li>Mum&#8217;s the word<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The phrase <strong>&#8220;keep it under your hat&#8221;<\/strong> with the sense of keeping something a secret apparently first appeared in writing in the early 20th century, and referred to keeping something in your head, i.e. the thing you keep under your hat [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/under-your-hat.html\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The phrase <strong>&#8220;between you, me and the bed-post&#8221;<\/strong> possibly first appeared in writing in 1832 in <em>Eugene Aram<\/em>, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/between-you-me-and-the-bedpost.html\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The phrase <strong>&#8220;Mum&#8217;s the word&#8221;<\/strong> has nothing to do with mothers or Egyptian mummies. Instead it refers to the medieval tradition of mumming, a kind of performance involving acting and dancing that was at first done in silence  [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/mums-the-word.html\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Do you know any other similar phrases in English or other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learnt this week that in Swedish if you say that something is &#8220;between four eyes&#8221; &#8211; mellan fyra \u00f6gon &#8211; it means that it is known just to you and the person you&#8217;re speaking to, and should be kept secret. Equivalent expressions in English include: This is (just) between you and me\/I Keep it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,67,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-swedish","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18110"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18122,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110\/revisions\/18122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}