Taut ship or tight ship This nautical phrase is used to describe a ship whose crew is well-disciplined and whose efficiency rating is high. During WWII, the phrase used was mostly taut ship. Presumably it comes from the days of sailing vessels when lines drawn taut would be sign of a shipshape craft and crew. (THE FIRST ONE DISAPPEARED - AGAIN!)

Interesting - when I happened to come across it in a book or on TV I always knew what it meant, but never thought about the origins.

When I was learning Russian, we were taught that a large portion of Russian is idiomatic and cannot be translated literally. For example, дождь идёт translates literally as "rain takes a walk," but really means "It is raining." This makes learning Russian even that much more difficult than English, not to mention the complex grammar in Russian with multiple declensions and cases for nouns and adjectives (even more than in Latin) and multiple ways of conjugating verbs, not counting all the irregular verbs. We were also taught that most Russians do not speak proper Russian - mainly because it is too difficult. English is much simpler and easier, and still native English speakers often do not speak proper English. It's too bad that Latin is not taught as much in schools as it used to be.

I remember in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas refuses to accept the money given to him for disclosing Christ's location. "I don't want your blood money." I really like that movie for the music and acting, but especially love the way the beginning and end are framed by "real" scenes where the actors arrive and leave. Another wonderful Norman Jewison film.