What is the origin of the idiom “at sixes and sevens” ?
From World Wide Words: “There are two old stories that try to explain this. One tries to find it in the King James Version of the Bible; Job 5:19 has “He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven shall no evil touch thee”, a couplet that makes no sense to us today and which doesn’t seem to link to any known use of the expression. The other story, more common and very widely believed, traces it back to a dispute between two of the ancient livery companies in the City of London. These companies, trade guilds, grew up from the latter part of the twelfth century as associations to protect their members’ interests. (They were called livery companies because members had the right to wear a distinctive costume or livery.) There was a lot of squabbling with other guilds about precedence in the early days. One especially troublesome dispute concerned the Merchant Taylors Company, whose members were tailors, and the Skinners Company, whose members controlled the trade in furs. In 1484 th
