by Max Cryer
How the other half lives
The concept of one socio-economic group being unaware of how another group lives was in French consciousness at least as early as the sixteenth century (Rabelais mentions it in 1532). Bishop Joseph Hall brought the matter into English with his Holy Observations in 1607:
One half of the world knowes not how the other liues: and therefore the better sort pitty not the distressed ... because they knowe it not.
But to American pioneer photojournalist Jacob Riis goes the honor of launching the more concise and currently recognizable form. How the Other Half Lives was the title of his 1890 study of the squalid tenement areas of New York and the levels of poverty and crime among them—though the buildings were mainly owned by the absent rich. The term quickly went into common usage, referring not only to the rich observing the poor, but also exemplified by glossy magazines that enable the poor to spy on the rich.
Humble abode
A simple enough coupling of two words, but somebody had to think of it first. And that somebody was Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice (1813) when the obsequious Mr. Collins explains to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet his close friendship with Lady Catherine De Bourgh:
The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only by a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship’s residence.
I can see Russia from my house
During the 2008 American presidential campaign, Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska and runningmate for John McCain, described Russia as a neighbor to Alaska and added, “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
This is perfectly true—the Alaskan island of Little Diomede is only a few kilometers from the Russian island of Big Diomede, behind which the coast of mainland Russia can clearly be seen.
But in a later widely reported television appearance, comedy actress Tina Fey, dressed and made-up to resemble Mrs. Palin, changed her words to, “I can see Russia from my house.” Fey was so convincing that many people believed they’d heard Sarah Palin say it, which she hadn’t.
I couldn’t care less
It is used informally as a dismissive statement expressing lack of interest. The phrase surfaced publicly in 1945 when BBC war correspondent Stewart MacPherson commented on a commando operation in which the British gave the impression they were going on a picnic:
They just couldn’t care less.
But much wider public exposure came internationally in 1946, when former Air Transport Auxiliary man Anthony Phelps published an informal memoir of his World War II experiences, entitled I Couldn’t Care Less, described as “The humor, thrills and pathos, the hardships and fun that Ferry Pilots alternatively endured and enjoyed. Incidents in their daily work are recounted in an easy-flowing style.”
(For unknown reasons, American usage has reversed the term into “I could care less,” though quixotically its meaning remains exactly the same.)
I did it my way
French musician Jacques Revaux composed the tune with words by Gilles Thibaut and Claude François. Their song was called “Comme d’habitude” (As Usual), a sad song about the singer’s low-spirited loneliness and feelings of defeat at the failure of a romance.
While holidaying in France during 1967, Canadian singersongwriter Paul Anka heard the song, liked the tune, and sought to obtain the rights. Two years later fifty-four-year-old Frank Sinatra told Anka he was considering retirement, and Anka abandoned the original depressing words to “Comme d’habitude” and invented an entirely different set of English words with the opposite meaning.
Set to the French tune, Anka’s anthem of defiant selfconfidence was retitled “My Way.” Sinatra recorded the song in 1969, and far from retiring, he continued singing it for the next twenty-five years. Cover versions by Elvis Presley, Brooke Benton, Rod McKuen, Dorothy Squires, Sid Vicious, Robbie Williams, and Greta Keller helped cement the phrase from which the title comes into common usage.
If I’m not in the obituaries, I get up
In 1959 veteran British actor A.E. Matthews was ninety years old and still appearing on stage at London’s Aldwych Theatre in How Say You with Derek Nimmo. During this period he said:
I pick up The Times every morning and look in the obituary column—if I’m not in it I get up and go to work.
He died soon after (1960), but the line lingered on and has been “borrowed” by other aging celebrities ever since.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
Variously described as an old saying from Sweden, or an old saying from Texas, the expression was seen in the Wall Street Journal in October 1976 in the form: “If it ain’t broke let’s don’t fix it.”
The expression sprang into greater prominence during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The President’s Director of Office Management and Budget was Bert Lance, who in May 1977 was quoted in Nation’s Business as saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The words have become a favorite warning of the cautious against anything new and untried.
(An interesting variation came from New Zealand writer Colin Hogg, commenting on a public organization which appeared to be running smoothly and then, without warning, changed to something else. Hogg said their policy seemed to be: “If it ain’t broke—break it.”)
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck
An early version of this reasoning is found in the works of American poet James Whitcombe Riley, who sometime prior to 1916 wrote:
When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
The term became more prominent in a rather more elaborate form in 1950. Richard Immerman’s book The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention quotes Richard Cunningham Patterson Jr., United States ambassador to Guatemala in 1950, referring to the possibility of Communism:
Suppose you see a bird walking around in a farm yard. This bird has no label that says “duck.” But the bird certainly looks like a duck. Also, he goes to the pond and you notice that he swims like a duck. Then he opens his beak and quacks like a duck. Well, by this time you have probably reached the conclusion that the bird is a duck, whether he’s wearing a label or not.
A later abbreviated version was famously used by President Ronald Reagan in 1967: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck.”
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain
The legend tells that the power of the prophet Muhammad was put to the test when he tried to summon Mount Safa. When the mountain didn’t budge, Muhammad explained to his followers that if the mountain had obeyed and come to him, it knew that its weight would crush him and everyone with him.
Therefore, he should go to the mountain and give thanks for its wisdom in sparing them all. This story came into English in 1625, as reported by Francis Bacon in Essays.
If you can’t beat them, join them
Before it became internationally popular, the notion existed in various formats:
If you can’t whip ’em, jine ’em
or
If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em.
In a 1932 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, Frank R. Kent wrote that the latter version was one of the Indiana Senator James Eli Watson’s favorite phrases. Watson’s usage helped popularize the saying, which underwent some further refinement over the years. It appeared in Quentin Reynolds’ The Wounded Don’t Cry (1941) as an “old adage”:
If you can’t lick ’em join ’em.
“Lick” being a peculiarly American usage, in time the saying became: “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen
Harry S. Truman apparently enjoyed saying it, but there is evidence. He had heard it from someone else years before he became U.S. President. Truman’s biographer Robert Ferrell reports that in 1931 Truman took the oath of office as presiding judge in Jackson County. The
Independence Examiner newspaper of January 1, 1931 tells that during the same ceremony, another judge was sworn in—E.I. “Buck” Purcell—who remarked that as a judge he expected there would be occasions when the heat was applied, “But if a man can’t stand the heat, he had better stay out of the kitchen.”
Truman went on to use it on various occasions himself over the years of his presidency, as also did his Presidential Military Aide, General Harry Vaughan.
Ignoramus
As part of the Latin verb ignorare, the word ignoramus (meaning we do not know) was once used only by the legal profession. It was written on documents to indicate that the matter therein was of imperfect reasoning or doubtful validity.
The word was launched into a much wider public arena in 1615 when playwright George Ruggle’s new work was staged, portraying the legal profession as imbued with both arrogance and ignorance. The main character—and the play’s title—was Ignoramus.
I have a cunning plan
In 1983 British TV viewers were introduced to Blackadder, an accident-prone prince of doubtful lineage, played by Rowan Atkinson and surrounded by an ensemble cast of magnificently eccentric characters. Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, and Ben Elton were the scriptwriters, providing Blackadder with apparently insoluble crises to which his ramshackle dogsbody servant Baldrick would suggest possible solutions of tangential absurdity.
As delivered by actor Tony Robinson, these invariably began with the line:
I have a cunning plan . . .
which was greeted with ever more despairing groans from the others, through four series, five specials, and numerous guest appearances. The line became a widespread jocular introduction whenever someone was about to outline perfectly mundane arrangements.
I have a dream
Notably said by Baptist minister Martin Luther King in Detroit in June 1963, then again with tremendous effect at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, in August 1963.
The expression is simple and could have been used previously by others at other times—there is an echo of Stephen Sondheim’s words (“I had a dream”) introducing Ethel Merman’s hit number “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” in the show Gypsy (1959), but such was the impact of the Lincoln Memorial speech there is little doubt that when the phrase is used nowadays, Martin Luther King comes to mind first.
I kid you not
Its quasi-archaic inversion, combined with the informal “kid” draws attention to the fact that the speaker is being definite about something.
The expression may have been in use prior to 1951, but made a notable debut in print when Herman Wouk’s Caine Mutiny was published and became a Pulitzer Prize winner. The book introduced the character of Lt. Commander Queeg, who said:
I am damn well responsible for anything that happens on this ship.
From here on in, I don’t intend to make a single mistake . . . I won’t tolerate anybody making any mistakes for me, and
I kid you not.
And, well, I think you get the idea without my drawing you a picture.
Soon after, Wouk’s Caine Mutiny was adapted into a Broadway play, followed by a 1954 movie (five Oscar nominations) starring Humphrey Bogart as Queeg.
Clearly the expression “I kid you not” had received widespread coverage by 1956. More was to come.
In 1957 Jack Paar became host of the television show Tonight. For six years, before large audiences of viewers, Paar made a catchphrase of “I kid you not,” and became closely associated with it. His 1960 book used the expression as its title. Sometimes Jack Paar is credited with coining it, which is not the case. But he certainly helped make it very widely known.
In a nutshell
A supposed observation from the Roman orator and statesman Cicero (106–43 BC) was later commented on by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia (AD 77). It referred to Cicero’s contention that Homer’s Iliad had been copied in such small writing that the whole work could fit inside a walnut shell. Since the Iliad has over 15,000 verses, this was no mean feat—if it were true.
Nevertheless, the image remained and still does, having passed down through centuries and languages. Although Cicero was apparently describing an entire work that was simply of small size, the effective metaphor is that a large amount of information can be reduced to its essence in just a few words.
In a rut
A truly rural statement indicating the situation of a carriage driver with a wheel stuck in a groove in the road. Thomas Carlyle used the term metaphorically in Essay on Chartism (1839), indicating any situation that allows for little change or development.
The metaphor rapidly took over from the literal meaning, among business and professional people in cities who had perhaps never seen a real rut.
In one ear and out the other
The expression dates back, more or less intact, to 1387 in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, when Pandarus is comforting Troilus for the loss of his loved one, though the words of comfort are simply not being taken in. The Penguin Classics edition presents Nevill Coghill’s setting of the original Chaucer in contemporary English:
He spoke whatever came into his head
To help his friend, and following his brief
He did not care what foolishness he said
So long as it might bring him some relief.
But Troilus, so nearly dead for grief
Paid little heed, whatever it was he meant
In at one ear and out the other it went.
Inside every fat man there is a thin man
The concept came originally from British novelist George Orwell in his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air.
Has it ever struck you that there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?
Orwell’s original line has been recycled and adapted many times. In 1944 Cyril Connolly expanded the original line into “Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signalling to be let out” (The Unquiet Grave). And one of the line’s more unusual adaptations was screenwriter Stephen Schiff’s remark that “it’s not true that in every terrific book there’s a terrific film wildly signalling to be let out.”
An amusing use of the line surfaced in the British TV series Absolutely Fabulous when actress Jennifer Saunders, complaining about being overweight, said to her screen mother (June Whitfield), “Inside this fat woman there’s a thin woman screaming to get out.” Miss Whitfield replied, “Just the one, dear?”
(To be) in someone’s black books
At least as early as 1175 there were various official books—bound in black leather and actually called Black Books—containing straightforward matter concerning the Exchequer or the Admiralty. But the term gained its connotation of someone being out of favor in the reign of King Henry VIII.
During the 1530s he was anxious to shed Queen Catherine for the more youthful charms of Anne Boleyn. But the Pope refused him an annulment, and Henry went looking for news of murky doings in the strongholds of the Church in England—corruption in the monasteries, abuses of privilege and breaths of scandal.
Henry didn’t write the assertions himself, but ordered that all damaging information found be recorded in black-bound books. So black books referred quite literally to records of censure.
From there, black books acquired a metaphorical sense. Being in someone’s black books didn’t necessarily mean anything was written in an actual book, just that disapproval existed. That same aura of censure carried over to the later term “black list.” By the nineteenth century, black books had also developed a parallel but slightly softened version—bad books.
Insomnia
The condition of sleeplessness is known as far back as history relates and is alluded to by writers in various terms: Chaucer’s “endure without sleep and be in sorrow”; Charlotte Brontë’s “restless pillow”; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.”
The word insomnia had been in English from the sevente
enth century, but not in everyday use. A poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti brought the term into prominence. Rossetti, after a tenyear courtship, married and then suffered the death of his wife only two years later. His sleeplessness became critical and his poem “Insomnia” was published in 1881, only a month before his own death.
Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit’s wind . . .
These, and the disturbing (to an insomniac) lines that follow, brought the formal word insomnia into common recognition.
In the doghouse
Although many dogs live indoors with the rest of the family, a doghouse, or kennel, is a common enough feature of thousands of back yards. And sometimes even an indoors dog who is in disgrace may be sent out to the doghouse.
Steam locomotives had a small windowed alcove built above the engine tender to house the brakeman. Not the most comfortable place to live, it was sometimes known as a “doghouse.”
But deep in the psyches of generations of theater patrons, cinemagoers and television audiences is the real doghouse of the Darling family in Peter Pan, created by J.M. Barrie and first introduced to the public in 1904. The family’s dog Nana is indeed nanny to the Darling children, and their father Mr. Darling sometimes chained her up.