Thing Not To Do Today: make a horlicks of something.

 To make a complete horlicks of something is to make an utter mess of it. Well, it is in England, anyway.

So what is horlicks? 

Horlicks is a powder you add to hot milk to make a drink. It's quite sweet, something in the nature of Ovaltine, but it's cream in colour and doesn't contain chocolate. It was invented as a baby food in 1873 by two brothers, William and James Horlicks from Gloucestershire, England, who had moved to Chicago.

Horlicks didn't have much success as a baby food, but adults in Britain still drink it enthusiastically as a bedtime drink to help them sleep (and adults in India drink it even more enthusiastically at breakfast time). Although the USA didn't take to it so much, the explorer Richard Byrd named an Antarctic mountain range after the drink in gratitude for the the malty warmth it provided for him and his crew (and for the expedition sponsorship from the firm).

But what has this pale, bland, sweet milky drink got to do with an utter catastrophic mess?

Well, this:

Thing Not To Do Today: make a horlicks of something. The surname Horlicks comes from the Old English words har, grey, and locc, as in a lock of hair. The first Horlick probably had a streak of grey hair.

The connection with mess is in the sound of the word. It's just that the word sounds like bollix - and a similar, ruder, British word, too.

The Old English word beallucas means testicles.