an idiom a week

This weeks' idiom sounds most peculiarly to me:

it's no skin off your nose

Meaning:
it's none of your business
I don't care if he doesn't come to the wedding. It's no skin off my nose.

As luck would have it, while I was trying to decipher the meaning of this idiom, I stumbled against a website where the origin of this curious idiom is made clear.

The story goes something like this:

In sixteenth century England there was a cloak-and-dagger group of cabbage worshipers who practiced a variety of peculiar cabbage rituals in the disreputable neighborhoods of London. As their worship places had to remain secret, a very small hole was cut in the doors of the places of worship, so that the identity of the worshipers could be verified.

However, electric lights were unknown at that time, so the worshipers had the ingenious idea of marking a small mark on the left side of their nose which was then searched for by the high priests before granting the worshipers entry. If the mark was missing, the priests would take a sharp knife and slice a long stripe from the swindler's nose.

This "painful" story goes again to show how rich the history of the English language is and how it is important accordingly to learn about the culture a language is part of.

To read the whole story, visit:
http://pastimesandrags.com/writings/skin.html