Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Origin of Words and Phrases: Volume 1

Starting point is 00:00:00 The English language is full of very quirky idioms and phrases. Every language has them, and these are just some of the things that make each language unique. Most native speakers of English may use these idioms and phrases all the time, even though they have no idea where they came from. For people who don't speak English as their first language, these phrases could often make no sense. Learn more about the origins of common English words and phrases on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have you to have you to do? your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world, world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled

Starting point is 00:01:17 to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. One of the most common requests I've received, and something I've had on my to-do list for quite some time, is an episode on the origins of various words and phrases in the English language. There are so many words and phrases in English that they couldn't possibly fit into a single episode, so this will just be the first of many episodes on the subject. So in this episode, I want to focus on idioms in the English language. An idiom is a common phrase or expression that has a figurative or non-literal meaning,

Starting point is 00:02:00 which is different from the literal definition of the individual words that make up the phrase. Idioms are often deeply ingrained in a language as culture and are used to convey a particular idea or message in a concise and memorable way. Every language has idioms that might not make sense to someone, even if they can speak the individual words in the language. If English is not your first language, understanding these idioms can be difficult to comprehend and use in regular conversation. So let's start with one that many of you might be familiar with, and it comes from the stage, telling someone to break a leg. This is one that you might be familiar with, as it's usually

Starting point is 00:02:37 used in conjunction with someone putting on a performance. In the theater community, it's considered bad luck to wish someone good luck. So you do the opposite. and wish them bad luck when you want to actually wish them good luck. The origin may actually come from the German phrase, Hulse on Bidenbrook, which literally translates to neck and leg fracture. And its use may have come from the fact that it coincidentally sounds very similar to the Yiddish phrase for success and blessing. The term was used by German aviators in the early 20th century,

Starting point is 00:03:09 which then made its use in general German society, which then found its way to English after German Jewish performers immigrated to the U.S. England after the First World War. The first written examples of the term break a leg being used in the context of theater only date back to the 1930s. One false attribution of the phrase, which is actually kind of understandable, is given to the assassin who killed Abraham Lincoln John Wilkes Booth. Booth was an actor who broke his leg jumping onto the stage after shooting the president.

Starting point is 00:03:41 While there is an actor, a stage, and a broken leg involved, it has nothing to do with the origin of the phrase. The next phrase that's often used in English is throwing the baby out with the bath water. This means that you shouldn't get rid of something good in the process of getting rid of something bad. This too is something that has a German origin. The earliest known use of the term was a German illustration from 1512, which said, Daskind mit dim bad a outshutin, while showing a woman dumping a bucket of water with a baby in it. In the 17th century, it was used by Johannes Kepler, used it in such a way that he assumed his audience knew what he was talking about. The phrase is believed to have traveled to France before being used in English in the 19th century.

Starting point is 00:04:25 The first use in English was by the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, who was writing on the subject of the abolition of slavery. He was admonishing his readers that in the process of ending slavery, it was important not to harm the people who were enslaved in the process. The literal root of the phrase probably comes from the practice in the Middle Ages of taking aback. baths were taken infrequently, and taking one usually meant heating water from a stove to fill up a bathtub. The entire family would share the same tub of water, taking turns going from oldest to youngest. The last person to use the bath water would be the baby, so you'd want to make sure the baby was out of the water before throwing it away. Another phrase that really doesn't make any sense when taken literally is,

Starting point is 00:05:10 raining cats and dogs. This phrase has origins that are much more obscure. One explanation is that it comes from the drainage system of cities in the Middle Ages. During a particularly hard storm, it would dislodge all of the dead material accumulated in it. In Jonathan Swift's 1710 poem, description of a city shower, he says, quote, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, dead cats and turnip tops come tumbling down the flood. So this could be an explanation, but why cats and dogs instead of rats and pigeons? Another explanation put forward is the term cats and dogs is a corruption of the term waterfall in other languages. In Greek, the word catadupi was used to describe the cataracts in the Nile

Starting point is 00:05:57 River. Kedadupi was also the word in both Old French and Old English for waterfall. However, it's entirely possible that neither explanation is true and that it's just a nonsense expression. Another phrase with a clearer and more concise origin is devil's advocate. Playing the devil's advocate is to take a stance on something you don't necessarily believe in just to test the validity of something you do believe in or to try to find a weakness in an argument. A devil's advocate was a literal position in the Catholic Church in the process of determining someone's sainthood. In the Middle Ages, the church developed a much more rigorous system for creating saints. For someone to be declared a saint is actually a lengthy process that can take years or even centuries.

Starting point is 00:06:42 A case has to be presented as to why a person should be declared a saint. In 1887, Pope Sixtus V created the position of Advocatus Diaboli, which in Latin literally means devil's advocate. The devil's advocate was to serve as a counter to those advocating for sainthood. It's believed that any candidate for sainthood, who was able to withstand this adversarial process, was worthy of being declared a saint. The position was abolished in 1983, but its use as a phrase in English still exists today. Something which many people do is to turn a blind eye towards something. To turn a blind eye means to ignore something which is inconvenient.

Starting point is 00:07:25 In this case, the phrase has a false origin, which is actually far more interesting than the actual origin. The origin which is usually given is that the phrase came from the British Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nelson was blind in one eye. At the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, the British Frum was, fleet was led by Admiral Hyde Parker. He sent a message to Nelson by semaphore, ordering him to break off an attack. Nelson, being much more aggressive, put the telescope up to his blind eye and said, I have a right to be blind sometimes. I really do not see the signal. His aggressiveness

Starting point is 00:07:59 won the day, and he was appointed commander of the fleet the next. While it's a great story, the problem is the term was being used before 1801. The earliest use of the phrase was in 1698. Church of England clergyman John Norris said, quote, To be crucified to the world and to have the world crucified to us, to be dead to its pleasures and insensible of its charms, to turn the deaf ear and the blind eye to all those poms and vanities of the world which we renounced at our baptism, and to have it no longer in our hearts but under our feet.

Starting point is 00:08:31 End quote. The original phrase was to turn a blind eye and deaf ear, but by the 19th century this seems to have just been shortened to turn a blind eye. So the exact origin isn't known, but it could just be quite literal. One of the greatest mysteries in English is the origin of the phrase, to go the whole nine yards. The phrase means to go all the way.

Starting point is 00:08:56 In 1982, New York Times language columnist William Sapphire appeared on the Larry King radio show and made a request to the public to help them solve a mystery as to the origin of this phrase. What were the nine yards measuring and why were there nine of them? Many people sent explanations that had to do with dressmaking, that for a fine dress you had to use the whole nine yards of cloth. Another explanation was that it was a nautical term. A yard was a wooden rod connecting a sailing ship's mass to its support sails. On a square-rigged three-mast ship, there were three yards each, so the whole nine yards meant that all the sales were out.

Starting point is 00:09:35 As part of his request, the Oxford English Dictionary published a supplement to the phrase, which put the origin of the whole nine yards only in the 1960s and 1970s. The earliest use of the phrase was in an American military context, and it was thought that it may have something to do with the amount of ammunition used in fighter aircraft during World War II. Each plane was equipped with nine yards of belt ammunition. If a plane went out and used all of its ammunition, then they used the whole nine yards. The problem with this origin story is that people began to discover older references to going the whole six yards. These were appearing as early as the mid-19th century. So, what were the whole six yards measuring? The current theory is that they weren't measuring anything.

Starting point is 00:10:22 The number is wholly random. It's just like living on cloud nine. The phrase actually used to be living on cloud seven. The whole nine yards could just be an example of idiom inflation. Furthermore, the key to the idiom isn't the number nine, it's the word whole. Once you, you say whole, it doesn't really matter what comes next. It could be the whole ball of wax, the whole enchilada, the whole shebang, or the whole nine yards. That being said, there still isn't any definitive proof one way or the other as to the origin of the whole nine yards. This, of course, just scratches the surface of the number of phrases in English that have unique or mysterious origins. If you have suggestions for other phrases, please don't be afraid to throw your hat into the ring.

Starting point is 00:11:07 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's first review comes from listener, Hittguihugi, over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Super Good, De Best, followed by 51 thumbs-up emojis and one thumbs-down emoji. Well, thanks, Hittguggy. When translated to the Siskel and Ebert system of thumbs,

Starting point is 00:11:39 that is quite a compliment. My second review comes from Deanna Ballard, also from Apple Podcasts in the United States. She writes, word origins. I thought maybe this podcast would mostly be about word origins, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. So far, I am anxiously waiting for the next podcast. Well, thanks, Deanna. I think you should be pleased with this episode. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Origin of Words and Phrases: Volume 1

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