It's Old English form is actually "hl��fd�ge," which was changed to "lafdi" or "ladi" during the Middle English years. Either way, it's original meaning was "loaf-kneader."
Meaning: To be aggressively seeking a confrontation.
Example: Presidential opponents are typically loaded for bear waiting for missteps in office. Clinton provided many opportunities to load up.
Origin: Old muskets were loaded by pouring gunpowder down the barrel, followed by the shot. The power of a given charge could be adjusted by adding more or less gunpowder.
When hunting large animals like bear, a large and powerful gunpowder charge would be loaded into the musket. Hence loaded for bear is to be hunting with a powerful charge ready.
Two centuries ago, Captain William Lynch cut a wide swath through parts of Virginia. As magistrate of a kangaroo court, he heard brief testimony and then sentenced several Pennsylvania County ruffians to hang. Lynch might have been forgotten, had his exploits not come to the attention of a literary giant. Writing in Southern Literary Messenger, Edgar Allan Poe described the Virginia cleanup of crime as a "lynching.".
Example: I want to buy the house and the furniture, lock stock and barrel.
Origin: This phrase refers to the three primary components of a firearm.
"Lock" is an archaic term for what is now called the "action" or the "receiver". It was originally called the "lock" because the mechanism locked the hammer back in the cocked position. The trigger releases the lock to fire the weapon.
Stock is the portion of the firearm that the holds all the other parts together and provides a grip for the shooter. This is the part of the firearm that was traditionally made of wood.
Barrel is of course the metal tube that the bullet is fired through.
If you purchase a gun "lock, stock and barrel" you got the whole gun, complete. Dating back to the American Revolutionary War, this refers to the three essential components of a gun (the lock was the firing mechanism).
Originating sometime during the 1940s, this expression is a play on the way a hog eats...with a great deal of self-indulgence. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure how the phrase came into being, or why the word "high" was thrown in there.
