Tourner autour du pot

Meaning: To beat around the bush.

Language: French

Literally: To turn around the pot

Category: Food & Drink

Origin: The image is a cooking pot from the 15th century, and the person circling it was originally after something more concrete than tact: skimming an advantage they weren't entitled to, the way someone might hover near a simmering pot hoping to dip in unseen. Only in the 19th century does the phrase settle into its modern sense of talking all around a subject instead of straight at it — using unnecessary detours to avoid saying, or asking, the thing directly. As with a great many expressions of this age, there is no single dated first use to point to; it was in the mouths of ordinary speakers well before any dictionary bothered to write it down.