Origin of Expression: Heads or Tails!
This may be a pretty straightforward one, but it kinda goes with my idea of writing a coin term glossary.
Now that I'm a coin collector it's always reverse and obverse in my head, which sounds just foolish, and looks even worse. you should see the funny looks when @ejr and I are out somewhere and have to make a decision and you pull out a coin and play "reverse or obverse"
Of course the obverse is the heads side and the reverse is tails!
But this post is about this expression in terms of coin flipping.
I'm sure most people understand the meaning in relation to the two sides of a coin. Of course heads likely makes a lot of sense, since most countries actually have a picture of someones head one side of the coin. This is well established and occurred as far back as roman times and most of there coins also bear the image of a ruler at those times.
But why "tails"
It is because the queen is really a devil with a tail?
It is because some old coins have animals with tails on the other side?
Nah of course those aren't the reasons.
It's just a matter of opposites
But my feet are the opposite of my head? You may ask?
Depends on if your an ancient person who thinks in terms of the mammalian skeleton and gets it invent words and their meaning or some modern man who can tell his head from his ass.
Tails has a long history of being used as the opposite of the head, this relates to a spinal coloum on other vertebrate animals that terminate at the tail. This of course is the same reason you may also hear tail used to described the posterior of a person.
Hopefully you picked up a few new factoids again this week and can go out and impress your friends
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Well... thats impressive. I'm not sure i ever thought about it in that perspective. Good one! Thank you!
Heads and tail... up and down... head and foot... got it! Thanks!
Thanks for the motivation, I feel tails has always been there to signify the two sides of a thing, more like the good and bad
I know coins can be valuable after a period of time but people tend to lost it somewhere. I hope i can found a valuable coin too.
Coins has always been used to separate two things, thanks for the info
I always like the reverse of a coin better than the obverse. I must know where to get that tails round you showed in the end. 😳
I much prefer if it were the one with Liz being the devil.... The sooner that bitch and the rest of the scroungers piss off the better the world will be
You’re a vet? Which service?
And only proof that coin collectors have a spine. Which means fiat is spineless. Right? That logic isn’t flawed at all. :)
I love stuff like this. A little bit of history, a little bit of information, some cheeky graphics, all stirred into a GREAT post!
Thank you for your interesting post x