Idiom of the week: Ring a bell

“Does it ring a bell?” Now we’re close to the end of the school year, tell me: did I say this too often in class?

I love this idiom. It’s musical, and very easy to remember! “To ring a bell” means  to be reminded of something you’ve heard or seen before, but not being able to remember exactly what.

The origin of this idiom could be related to the fact that bells have always been used to announce or pinpoint specific events: the school bell would signal the beginning of a class, the toaster bell would signal that it's time to take out the toast, the telephone bell would signal someone's calling, and so on. To sum up, the role of the bell is to help people remember something.

Other theories find the etymology of this idiom in Pavlov's "conditioned reflex". Pavlov used to ring a bell before feeding his dogs. The dogs always salivated in anticipation. Then, one day, he rang the bell but didn't feed the dogs -and to his amazement, they salivated all the same! 

In fact, there's a very popular pun in English based on this: "does the name Pavlov ring a bell?" If you google it, you'll find all kind of stuff bearing the phrase.