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'A fantastic collection of pithy conversation starting facts.' -- Charlie Higson
'Intriguing, hilarious and downright surprising little nuggets of information.' ― Daily Mirror
'Fascinating ... The answers to the questions you never even thought to ask.' ― Daily Mail
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A bumper final edition of the most surprising, amazing, and hilarious facts on the planet from the clever-clogs at QI.
John Lloyd CBE is the creator of QI and founding producer of The News Quiz, Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and No Such Thing As The News.
James Harkin is QI's Senior Researcher and Script Editor and is one of the presenters of the number one podcast No Such Thing As A Fish.
There's this idiom. I completely understand what it means, it means to prevent something or someone from continuing. But I'd like to know what "tracks" means. I've been looking all over the internet and I couldn't find the origin of this idiom, for some reason. In my opinion it means tracks are marks or lines of marks left on the ground or on another surface by an animal, person or vehicle which has moved over it, showing the direction they moved in. So, it's like it's already started moving and you just cause it to stop so there won't be anymore the marks on the ground.
When you walk, you make tracks [footprints]. You cannot put a foot down without it making a track. When you are suddenly stopped, you are standing in the last footprints that you made. You have been stopped in your tracks.
Right. It means literally what it says, but is used mostly metaphorically to indicate that some kind of surprise or threat has caused you to stop suddenly whatever you were doing.
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishstop/halt [dead] in your tracksstop/halt [dead] in your tracksSTOP MOVINGto suddenly stop, especially because something has frightened or surprised you → trackExamples from the Corpusstop/halt [dead] in your tracks• It had been stopped in its tracks by the Railway Inspectorate and a public outcry.• The people had stopped in their tracks, women were making their children stand behind them.• I stopped dead in my tracks, unsure of what to do next.• People stop in their tracks and stare.• Petey stopped dead in his tracks at the question.• Blue speaks her name, in a voice that seems strange to him, and she stops dead in her tracks.• A dreadful thought struck Jean, and she stopped in her tracks, right in the middle of the pavement.• An hour later they were halted in their tracks by a cataract not marked on the map.