Common Phrases

by Max Cryer

  In May 1965 journalist David Wise wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, commenting on the government’s “credibility” and the “gap” between its actions and its words. The headline to Wise’s article put the two words together. Thereafter, credibility gap exemplified the difference between stated policy and a growing awareness that the stated policy simply wasn’t true.

  (In 2003, writer Chris Appy in The President’s Global Credibility Gap described how the Vietnam-era “credibility gap” later became a Grand Canyon.)

  Cried all the way to the bank

  If a boxing match is “fixed,” the loser may suffer apparent shame but still earn a substantial fee. Such was said to be the situation in September 1946 when a charismatic American boxer known as Belloise lost his match.

  The Wisconsin State Journal reported that Belloise’s manager Eddie Walker was miserable—he “cried all the way to the bank.”

  Eight years later, piano-playing entertainer Liberace, after being savaged by a music critic, picked up the expression and used it to great effect.

  Crocodile tears

  Crocodiles can’t cry. Apparently there is some basis for the belief that sometimes small drops of fluid are exuded from crocodiles’ eyes, possibly to aid their chewing as they trickle down, or possibly activated by the movement of their jaws, or triggered by the heat of the sun. But whatever the cause, it is a physical reaction not an emotional one.

  These “tears” may have caused the belief that crocodiles weep as they demolish their victims. The thought was first seen in English when Sir John Maundeville’s book Voyage and Travail appeared in 1400. Sir John wrote:

  There be great plenty of Cokadrilles—These serpents slay men, and then weeping, eat them.

  The image of emotion falsely displayed, based on Maundeville’s crocodiles being sorrowful over lunch, has been with us ever since.

  Curate’s egg

  The term arose from a cartoon in Punch in November 1895 by George du Maurier. A high-ranking member of the Church of England clergy is lunching with a younger member and exclaims, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg Mr. Jones.”

  The young curate replies: “Oh no my lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!”

  Over time, the words in the cartoon caption have become condensed into the notion of the curate’s egg, indicating that something seemingly attractive may on closer examination have serious flaws.

  (The) cure is worse than the complaint

  The thought of seventeenth-century “cures”—like garlic, leek, and onion soup for a cold—may have been on Francis Bacon’s mind when he wrote, in Of Seditions and Troubles (1625), that:

  . . . the remedy is worse than the disease.

  This gradually evolved, so that by the nineteenth century it was in the form we know it now: “The cure is worse than the complaint.”

  (The) customer is always right

  The expression started out the other way around, and in French. In 1908 the Swiss hotel proprietor César Ritz coined the phrase, “Le client n’a jamais tort”—“The customer is never wrong.”

  The wording underwent a change in English, possibly with the help of H. Gordon Selfridge, whose London store opened in 1909 and used the Ritz slogan in English—and back to front.

  Cut off your nose to spite your face

  Paparazzi and gossip columnists aren’t new. News sheets, pamphlets, and satiric poems have been handed around populations for centuries, often stridently attacking the establishment.

  In late seventeenth-century France, no high-profile figure was safe from the chatty but vicious observations of French gossip Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux. His targets included the King, the Cardinals, the aristocrats, and the military brass. His acerbic Historiettes were completed around 1659 but not published until well after his death. They contained references to a policy which King Henry IV was contemplating, but of which Tallemant disapproved. He commented that if the King followed his plan:

  Se couper le nez pour faire dépit a son visage.

  He would be “cutting off his nose to spite his face.”

  Cut to the chase

  In early cowboy movies there were frequent scenes of frantic travel on horseback—often good guys chasing bad guys. Within the rhythm of movie-making, such scenes usually alternated with more static dialogue-based scenes that served to advance the plot and explain why the goodies were chasing the baddies. So among the scriptwriters and directors the instruction “cut to the chase” indicated to the film editor it was time to cut into the film and add some more footage of the galloping horses.

  The term went public in 1929 when journalist, screenwriter, novelist, and comicstrip writer Joseph P. McEvoy’s novel Hollywood Girl was published. As part of the novel, a short section of a (fictional) screenplay was shown:

  Jannings escapes . . . Cut to the chase.

  Gradually, the term shifted from its original absolutely literal meaning and became a metaphor instead, referring to ditching the preamble and getting straight to the point of any discussion.

  Cyberspace

  Although fans of technology speak of cyberspace, it of course doesn’t actually exist as distinct from “space.” Strictly, the word cyberspace refers to a system rather than a place. A great number of signals pass through space (radio and television signals, for instance), but so do rain, wind, sound, and light. To this still uncrowded highway, add satellite signals, cell-phone messages, and wireless Internet communications.

  The first of the cyber words was cybernetics, derived from the Greek word kubernetes, meaning “a steersman,” which crept into French in the 1800s as “cybernétique.”

  In 1948, American mathematician Norbet Wiener, wanting to describe the control of automated decision-making in machines, announced, “We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name cyber-netics.”

  Over thirty years later, in 1982, the word cyberspace was invented by science fiction writer William Gibson in a story called “Burning Chrome.” Its use expanded in his 1984 novel Necromancer and gradually went into universal vernacular, spawning derivatives: cyberpunk, cyberhippy, cyberjunky, and cybercafé.

  See also Virtual reality.

  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

  Starting around 1800, an enthusiastic and very eccentric preacher began touring the United States, often on horseback, attracting large crowds with his declamatory style and bizarre appearance. Unkempt, far from clean, he yelled and postured, flattered, fascinated, and challenged.

  Lorenzo Dow died in 1834, and in 1836 his writings were published as Reflections on the Love of God. During his many speeches he had made a point of attacking clergymen who drew attention to the inconsistencies and contradictions within the Bible. This argument appeared in his writings as:

  . . . those who preached it up to make the Bible clash and contradict itself, by preaching something like this: “You can and you can’t—You shall and you shan’t—You will and you won’t—And you’ll be damned if you do—And you’ll be damned if you don’t –”

  It is possible that Lorenzo Dow may have influenced the usage of other similar expressions like “Between a rock and a hard place,” “Between the devil and the deep blue sea” and “A no-win situation.”

  Darby and Joan

  Envisaged universally as the quintessential devoted old couple, Darby and his wife Joan were real people who died sometime around 1730. John Darby was a printer who lived at Bartholomew Close in London. Mr. Darby had an apprentice whose poetic talent had been encouraged by Alexander Pope.

  In 1735, shortly after John Darby is believed to have died, a ballad appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine. There is no solid evidence as to who wrote the poem, but the UK National Dictionary of Biography names the author as that apprentice printer of John Darby’s, one Henry Woodfall. Entitled “The Joys of Love Never Forgot,” the poem told of a loving married couple in their late years. They were depicte
d as old-fashioned and not welcoming change; no attempt was made to glamorize them:

  Old Darby, with Joan by his side,

  You’ve often regarded with wonder:

  He’s dropsical, she is sore-eyed,

  Yet they’re never happy asunder.

  The poem was an immediate success and its title has been quoted ever since, evoking an image of a married couple whose family have flown the nest, leaving the old people comfortably alone.

  Besides figuring in the vernacular, the old couple’s names are commemorated in dozens of Darby and Joan Clubs.

  Dark side of the moon

  There is no actual dark side to the moon. It revolves around the earth and, while doing so, is also revolving on its own axis. So one half of it appears to be dark—just as half of the Earth is always dark.

  We only ever see one side of the moon. Astronauts who photographed the far side of the moon proved that it isn’t dark. But a vague impression of mystery and possible danger clings to the term.

  The concept of the moon having a dark side dates back to 1928 when Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Dolittle in the Moon was published. The good doctor, wearing dinner jacket and top hat, climbs on the back of a giant moth and flies to the moon. There he becomes very bouncy because of the lack of gravity, learns to talk to the insects and plants, and explores “the dark side of the moon.”

  Davy Jones’ locker

  There is no clear explanation as to why the deepwater monster whose locker is at the bottom of the sea is named Davy Jones. But he first reached the attention of the general English-speaking public in Tobias Smollett’s novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), in which the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep is described as follows:

  I’ll be damned if it was not Davy Jones himself. I know him by his saucer eyes, his three rows of teeth, his horns and tail, and the blue smoke that came out of his nostrils . . .

  Dead as a dodo

  The dodo is definitely dead. Nobody has seen one since 1662 and we only have a vague idea of what they might have looked like based on skeletal reconstruction and paintings done long after they were gone. Lewis Carroll brought the dodo fancifully back to life on the pages of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and this reminded people that the bird was extinct.

  But its first use as a metaphor for something lifeless had to wait a few more years. Michael Davitt was a prominent Irish labour leader, journalist, social activist, and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which was active in ostracizing land agent Charles Boycott). The Brotherhood’s leader was British MP Charles Parnell, from whom Davitt eventually became alienated.

  In July 1891, the New Zealand Tablet newspaper reprinted a report that Michael Davitt and his wife had sailed for San Francisco on board the Polynesian. When interviewed, Mr. Davitt had said:

  After the next election Mr. Parnell will have only four followers. Except as a private Member of Parliament, Mr. Parnell is as dead as the dodo.

  Dead as a doornail

  Although the theory is not entirely proven, it is believed that the nail referred to was the kind hammered through a thick door then “clenched” on the other side, thus rendering it useless if salvaged. To be dead as a doornail was certainly an expression known in France around 1200, when it appeared in a French poem “William of Palerne.” The authorship is unknown, and neither do we know who translated the work into English around 1350.

  But we can thank Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Lord High Constable of England, who commissioned the translation telling of William’s battle with the Steward of Spain at the fatal end of which:

  He bar him down to the earth, as ded as dornayl.

  (The) dead parrot

  Originally entitled “The Pet Shop,” this sketch was first broadcast in December 1969 and became one the most famous comedy items in British television history. Scripted and performed by Monty Python’s Michael Palin and John Cleese, it presented theater of the absurd in an irresistibly accessible way, with a script that seemed to use every known adjective, euphemism, idiom, metaphor, symbol, and synonym for death.

  It became universally known as the dead parrot sketch, and that name gradually moved into general usage to refer to anything utterly beyond resuscitation.

  In full confidence that the public would understand, a failed political movement, struggling business, or unpopular theory could be dismissed as a dead parrot. In the vernacular, the parrot that had reached such a profound end could be compared with a politician’s popularity that had “joined the choir invisible,” or with an unsuccessful parliamentary proposal that was “bereft of life,” or had “expired and gone to meet its maker.”

  Deep Throat

  The term was coined by an experienced writer/director of pornographic movies, Gerard Damiano. His 1972 movie Deep Throat about a young woman with an unusual appetite was an underground sensation as well as an above-ground headline story when twenty-two U.S. States banned showings within their jurisdictions.

  Two years later the phrase moved into an entirely different area of publicity with the release of the book All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. This backgrounder to the Watergate scandal was a major sensation. It told of the informant within official circles who gave secret information about the level of involvement of the President.This person was identified only by a code name borrowed from the blue movie—“Deep Throat.”

  (In 2005, the former Associate Director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, revealed that he had been the Deep Throat who gave information to Woodward and Bernstein.)

  The 1972 movie had certainly given the expression a certain (somewhat clandestine) public awareness. Their use of the term implies that Woodward and Bernstein recognized this. But the ructions about Watergate propelled the term deep throat into wide—even international—usage. Boosted by its intriguing connection with a secret whistle-blower inside U.S. government circles, the term came to be used to describe any anonymous informant.

  But none of this would have happened without Gerard Damiano.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures

  The expression originated with woodcutting. In 1500, the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus published the woodsmen’s saying about protecting tools used on an obdurate part of the tree:

  Malo nodo malus quaerendus cuneus

  (A hard wedge must be sought for a hard knot).

  In 1539, British scholar Richard Taverner published a version he described as “Englished,” meaning that he had replaced the forestry imagery with a medical one:

  Stronge disease requryeth a strong medicine.

  Legend has it that in 1605, when Guy Fawkes failed in his attempt to blow up King James I and his Protestant lords, he offered his version of the 1539 expression to his captors: “A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy.”

  Over time the expression moved beyond wood-cutting and illness into a wider field. Crime novelist Lucy Malleson (under her nom-de-plume Anthony Gilbert) in She Shall Die (1961) came closest to the now-common contemporary version:

  She’d have sold the roof over her head sooner than have you know. Desperate situations require desperate remedies.

  Diamonds are forever

  The original line was “A diamond is forever.” This simple statement was dreamed up in 1947 by New York copywriter Frances Gerety on behalf of De Beers Consolidated Mines. It became part of a brilliant advertising campaign, and in 1999 won an award as “advertising slogan of the century.” One aspect of the slogan’s success was its not-so-subtle implication that diamonds never deteriorate, matching their appeal to the desire for a permanent symbol of love and marriage.

  Ian Fleming moved the slogan into another sphere in 1956 when he used the phrase, with a subtle change into the plural, as the title of a James Bond novel.

  Did you feel the earth move?

  In For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway, the character of Robert Jordan makes love to Maria and feels

&nb
sp; ... the earth move out and away from under them.

  He asked Maria, “Did thee feel the earth move?”

  The title For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from John Donne’s Meditation XVII, and literary scholarship has found further traces of Donne’s influence. The same text (Meditation XVII) presents an image of the earth as being driven by erotic tension.

  Die Hard

  The expression became famous as the title of a 1988 movie starring Bruce Willis, followed by two sequels.

  But it had been in use over a century and a half earlier. Britain’s National Army Museum in Chelsea, London, reports on the gallantry of the 57th Foot (West Middlesex) Regiment and their formidable commander Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Inglis during the Peninsular War in 1811.

  A battle at Albuera in Spain found the British troops under determined attack by French troops. Inglis was shot and badly wounded, but remained in command, encouraging his soldiers to:

  Die hard—my men, die hard!

  Only one of the 24 officers survived, and 168 of the 584 troops. Subsequently, the 57th Regiment and the various military groupings descended from it became widely known as the Die Hards, a designation that has persisted for 200 years.