Have an Axe to Grind

This one is very often, and very incorrectly, credited to Benjamin Franklin, thanks to a similar story in his autobiography about a boy tricked into tediously turning a grindstone to sharpen a man's axe. But Franklin never actually used the phrase "an axe to grind" himself. The real coiner was Pennsylvania newspaper editor Charles Miner, who published an essay called "Who'll Turn Grindstone?" on 7 September 1810, writing: "When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, think I, that man has an ax to grind." The Franklin mix-up persisted in books and dictionaries for well over a century.