THE UNCOMMON ORIGINS OF SOME COMMON EXPRESSIONS - All my Eye and Betty Martin!

In this series I will write the origins of some of the most common expressions of phrases that we use in ours day to day life. The facts given here are extracts from a book by the same name that I got long time back from Reader's Digest. I wholeheartedly thank the author 'John Kahn' for this amazing book of trivia

ALL MY EYE AND BETTY MARTIN

A rather old-fashioned way of expressing disbelief is to exclaim My Eye! A fuller and still more old fashioned expression is all my eye and Betty Martin. One theory is that this dismissive phrase originated in a garbled or mocking version of the Latin prayer to Saint Martin that begins with the words Ah mihi, beate Martini: 'Oh, to me, blessed Martin.' Perhaps Protestants in the old days scornfully distorted the line when referring to anything they considered to be superstitious nonsense or hocus-pocus.

The term hocus-pocus, incidentally, probably developed in much the same way, going back to a Protestant mimicry of the Roman Catholic Mass - the latin words of consecration begin Hoc est Corpus: 'This is the body'.