You didn’t clean your room, stayed up past bedtime and now you’re refusing to eat those weird looking vegetables. Baby, you’re On Thin Ice.

As you might have guessed, this phrase was born from the literal no-no of walking on fragile ice - a common concern in the Netherlands, where ice skating was invented. It was first used figuratively by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Prudence (1841): "In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed."

Over time, the phrase became the universal SOS signal for shaky situations. Today, this phrase is the go-to metaphor for those "I'm in trouble" moments; it's a heads-up that things might just crack under pressure, so tread carefully.