Why does a man refer to his wife as his “better half”?
Most men call their wives their “better half” because they believe it, but the expression comes from an ancient Middle Eastern legend. When a Bedouin man had been sentenced to death, his wife pleaded with the tribal leader that because they were married, she and her husband had become one, and that to punish one-half of the union would also punish the half who was innocent. The court agreed and the man’s life was saved by his “better half.”

Why are women temporarily separated from their husbands called “grass widows”?
The expression grass widow originated hundreds of years ago in Europe where summers were unbearably hot. Because grass was scarce in the lowlands, husbands would send their wives and children, along with their resting workhorses, up into the cooler grassy uplands while they stayed in the heat to till the land. It was said that both the wives and horses had been “sent to grass,” which gave us the expression grass widows.

Why is a private detective called a “private eye”?
In 1850, the Pinkerton Detective Agency opened in Chicago with the slogan “We never sleep,” and its symbol was a large wide-open eye. Pinkerton was very effective and criminals began calling the feared operation “the eye.” Raymond Chandler and other fiction writers of the 1930s and 1940s simply embellished the underworld expression by introducing “private eye” as a description for any private investigator.