More phrases of life

Thanks to some of my devoted readers, and some more excavations of my memory, I have some more lovely sayings of great mystery.

For example, a small space might be described as “no room to swing a cat”. Why a cat, and why the image of holding a cat by its tail and swinging it around your head. Who would do that? However, I think it might be a reference to a “cat-o-nine-tails”, that vicious whip used notoriously on ships. It was a collection of individual leather strips bound together at one end but left loose at the other, used as punishment in the Royal Navy and elsewhere including on convicts in Australia. The loose thongs were knotted for maximum hurt. It was “swung” – lifted up by the perpetrator – and then lashed onto the miscreant’s back. A more plausible explanation I think.

A saying with an obvious meaning is that something has as much likelihood of happening as “a snowball’s chance in Hell”. Isn’t this wonderfully colourful? Another easily understood but colourful phrase is “I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole”. It comes, one imagines, from the image of a barge sailing along a canal being propelled – poled -- along by the boatman. Another version of this phrase is: “I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.” Would ten feet be the length of a barge pole?

Then there’s “I’d take that with a grain of salt” (or “pinch of salt”). The meaning is to be sceptical of what’s being presented to you. But I can’t make the connection between a grain of salt and a sceptical opinion. All correspondence entered into!

In Australia there are some delightful phrases for a far distance. We say something’s at” the back of beyond”, or “the back o’ Bourke” or “beyond the black stump”. And if you’re going a far distance, you’re going “out to woop woop!”

My lovely friend Janet in London has contributed “kicked the bucket” which is a curious way of saying someone has “snuffed it” and presumably is the source for a “bucket list”, those things you want to do before you go. Janet said she loathes “passed away” or even worse, “passed”. When her time comes she wants to just plain die!

Another lovely friend, Denise in Lennox Head, has contributed what she calls “a ripper”: “Cutting off your nose to spite your face”. We all know how to use it but what on earth does in mean? And where does it come from? According to a quick dip into Google, the phrase has been around since the 17^th Century. It means not to be self-destructive when seeking revenge.

“So far, so good!” Obvious meaning but how was it crafted? Apparently its first recorded use was in 1721, but why did it catch on, so to speak?

Another interesting phrase is “by the skin of your teeth” to describe a very narrow victory. Teeth don’t actually have skin, so who cooked up the metaphor. In fact it’s found in the Bible, in the book of Job who says: “My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.” (New RSV translation). It might possibly have meant the enamel on one’s teeth but who knows?

This phrase is in the same category as seeing something “in the corner of my eye”. We know what it means but eyes don’t actually have corners.

And while we’re talking words and grammar, I was reflecting the other day on the cavalier way we used to say the most awful things in the Olden Days.

I’m sure you all remember often-naughty Golliwog, the black character in Enid Blyton’s Noddy stories for small children. Apparently Golly was removed from more modern editions of Noddy on the grounds that at various levels the character was a stereotype for people of colour being bad.

If you gave someone something and then took it back, you were called an “Indian giver”. A certain long handled brush used to remove spiderwebs from the ceiling was called a
“Turk’s Head brush”.

Children did a selecting game which started: “Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo, catch a Nigger by the toe …”  And we had boot polish coloured “Nigger Brown”. There was also another children’s rhyme or game which I barely remember but somewhere it had the words: “Ching, chong chinaman …” Early explorers, surveyors and geographers thought nothing of naming features Chinaman’s Beach or Chinaman’s Creek and occasionally Jew’s Hill or the like. When I sat on the Geographical Names Board of NSW we discussed this issue and whether or not these names should be changed. At the time, we left them alone because they emanated from a specific time in Australian history when these appellations were non-controversial. I’m not sure whether they’re still there.

Another phrase which is firmly fixed in time was the expression the Australian troops in New Guinea during WWII called the native New Guineans who helped them navigate the Kokoda Track: “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels”. It was meant well but really, how insulting …

And a last linguistic note … I’ve only found out very recently the meaning of Aborigine. It comes from the Latin ab origine which means “from the beginning”.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations”:

The American writer Dorothy Parker when told that Calvin Coolidge had died: “How can they tell?”