Common Phrases
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And you call yourself pillars of society?
(A) place for everything and everything in its place
The discipline was long familiar to all men of the sea and a version was mentioned in print as early as 1640. But it came to land in 1827 when the American, the Rev. Charles Augustus Goodrich of Connecticut, wrote uplifting books for the young. Writing in Neatness, he referred to an “old adage” when giving the advice:
Have a place for every thing, and keep every thing in its proper place.
(Mrs. Beeton picked it up in Household Management, 1861.)
Plain as the nose on your face
A slight adjustment of “Plain as the nose on a man’s face,” from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (c.1532), introduced into English in 1693 by Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation.
Planned obsolescence
The expression dates back to 1932. During a lull in business, Bernard London, a successful New York real estate agent, wrote a twenty-page pamphlet on the depressed economic situation of that time. He observed that, during the Depression, people were retaining their old cars and wearing their old clothes longer than statisticians had expected. He coined a new term in his pamphlet’s title:
Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence.
Mr. London’s expression “planned obsolescence” didn’t cause much of a stir at the time, or for the following twenty years, but then caught the attention of Brooks Stevens. He was a successful home furnishing businessman and also had an impressive record designing cars and motorbikes. Stevens took up the term and in a landmark speech to an advertising conference in 1954 he reasoned that obsolescence could be planned, so that people would want something new sooner than they actually needed it.
The term became subjected to critical scrutiny when Vance Packard’s book The Waste Makers was published in 1960.
Pleased as Punch
Based on an Italian original—Polichinello—the comic puppet show had reached England by the seventeenth century and enjoyed great popularity; Samuel Pepys reported enjoying the show in 1666. Polichinello gradually became known as Punch, and although his puppet activities involved mayhem—even violence and child murder—Punch was eternally satisfied and benign, saying cheerfully, “That’s the way to do it!”
Irish poet and writer Thomas Moore is reputed to have used the term “pleased as Punch” in a private letter in 1813, and then put the expression into the public eye in 1818. This was in a collection of satiric poems from Paris supposedly written by the fictional Fudge family, who were quite unafraid of wide political generali-sations on the situation in Europe.
Moore’s letter to Lord Castelreagh (from “Phil Fudge”) tells us:
That Poland, left for Russia’s lunch
Upon the sideboard snug reposes
While Saxony’s as pleased as Punch,
And Norway ‘on a bed of roses’
That, as for some few million souls,
Transferred by contract, bless the clods!
If half were strangled—Spaniards, Poles,
And Frenchmen—’twouldn’t make much odds.
Poke fun at
Pointing the finger or guiding the conversation into ridicule. The expression first saw daylight in 1837 when Cardinal the Rev. H. Barham published his Ingoldsbury Legends series, including “The Monstre Balloon”:
Oh! fie! Mister Nokes,—for shame, Mister Nokes!
To be poking your fun at us plain-dealing folks –
Sir, this isn’t a time to be cracking your jokes,
And such jesting, your malice but scurvily cloaks . . .
(The) policemen are getting younger
Writings by the eminent British musician Sir Arnold Bax were published in autobiographical form in 1943 entitled Farewell My Youth. Sir Arnold wrote:
There are no compensations to weigh against advancing years—no, not one.
This appeared to remind Sir Arnold of one of his many conversations with British novelist Arnold Bennett. During this particular talk, Bax recounted that Bennett had remarked:
... the recognition of his own middle age came at an appalling moment when he realised for the first time that the policeman at the corner was a mere youth.
Pouring oil on troubled waters
Using actual oil on troubled waters had been a practice known as far back as the years BC. Pliny the Elder mentions it in AD 77. The expression reached English in AD 731, in Historia Ecclesiastica written by the Benedictine monk The Venerable Bede. He told of a priest being given a container of oil when he was sent as escort for a young woman from Ireland to marry King Oswin of Deira (Yorkshire). If a storm arose, he was instructed to pour oil on the water. This came to pass, and the water was calmed.
The original Latin was: “Assumpta ampulla, misit de oleo in pontum, et statim, ut praedictum erat, suo quievit a fervore.” After being translated into English in 1565, the expression went into common usage in its metaphorical sense—pouring oil on troubled waters brings calm to an argument or volatile group situation.
Power is a great aphrodisiac
Christopher Hibbert’s biography: Napoleon: His Wives and Women reports Bonaparte’s belief (spoken in French) that women “belong to the highest bidder.” British novelist Grahame Greene changed tack slightly and narrowed the concept when he commented in a Radio Times interview (1964) that:
Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.
Over time popular usage modified Greene’s original statement, so that “fame” alternated with “power” as being a great aphrodisiac, and “great” sometimes became “the ultimate.”
(Seven years after Grahame Greene’s original remark, in January 1971, New York Times journalist Hedrick Smith wrote of statesman Henry Kissinger: “Power, he has observed, is the great aphrodisiac,” but doesn’t say when or where Kissinger “observed” it. This one hearsay report has often been referred to as the source of a widespread belief that Kissinger changed Grahame Greene’s original remark. But evidence of Kissinger actually saying this has proved elusive.)
Pragmatism
The word is based on the Greek pragma, meaning deed, or act. In 1878 the philosopher and physicist Charles Sanders Peirce wrote a paper called “How to Make Your Ideas Clear” in the Popular Science Monthly. Peirce invented the word “pragmatism” to describe a guiding principle for scientists considering a concept in the mind in relation to the practical effect it would have in action.
His philosophies were subject to much academic discussion, and although the word pragmatic had existed since the 1500s, Peirce is credited with expanding it into pragmatism. The word duly went into common usage, though gradually with a rather less arcane application.
In contemporary times the word has taken on a meaning similar to “practicality”—the judgement of a situation according to a strict assessment of facts rather than theory.
(The) price of everything and the value of nothing
The line first occurs in the novel The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) by Oscar Wilde, as:
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Later, Wilde adapted the line himself by defining a cynic as, “A man who knows the price ... ” etc.
(The) Proms
The word promenade basically means a stately parade or a walk in a public place for pleasure and/or display. In the United States a prom usually refers to a school dance. But an entirely new reference developed with the evolution of promenade concerts in Britain.
In 1894 a meeting took place between British musician Henry Wood and entrepreneur Robert Newman. Newman was aware that symphonic concerts attracted audiences already accustomed to classical music. He discussed with Henry Wood the possibility of concerts with a more popular repertoire, presented in an informal atmosphere. The result in August 1895 was the start of a concert series for which Newman coined the name: Mr. Robert Newman’s Promenade Concerts.
The presentation proved very popular indeed; besides normal seating, a
large area of the Queens Hall (the original venue) was reserved for holders of very inexpensive tickets, who were permitted to eat, drink, stroll around, and smoke (though asked not to light matches when a singer was performing).
Henry Wood gradually evolved a program of popular and familiar items, mixed with unfamiliar and new material, talented young performers, and the works of foreign composers whose music had not before reached an English audience.
The Proms are now a firm part of the British musical landscape. However, although a large floor area is retained without any seating for informal attendees, there is no more eating, drinking, or smoking during a performance, and the “Prommers” tend to stand still, rather than stroll about.
Pull all the stops out
Each pipe in a pipe organ makes a different sound, and each is fitted with a stop. Pulling out a stop releases the air flow through that pipe, creating its unique sound, and the organist can create sound pictures by skilfully pulling out the desired combination of stops and allowing various pipes to have their say. The more stops pulled out, the more pipes are giving forth sound, hence the greater the volume.
This image of using the organ’s full resources became a metaphor for an extravagant effort or a situation using every resource available. The metaphor first appears in Matthew Arnold’s Essays in Criticism (1865):
Knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned organ . . . the modern Englishman.
Pull my leg
The origins of the term are generally believed to have something literal to do with pulling (or tripping) someone’s leg. But by the end of the nineteenth century the expression had moved into metaphor, meaning a trick, a fanciful tale, or an amusing joke.
Used in that manner it first appeared in print in William Brown Churchward’s book Blackbirding in the South Pacific (1888). A suspect deal involving oil is being discussed with a Frenchman who reported having been cheated earlier by a character named Mike:
You can send me word by some of the boats if you can’t come yourself. I shall be very anxious until I know, and then I shall be able to pull the leg of that chap Mike. He’s always about here trying to do me.
Pull your finger out
A legendary explanation is that loaded cannon had gunpowder poured into a small ignition hole blocked with a wooden rod. During battle, because of the urgency of the situation, after being poured the powder was held in place with a stuck-in finger. At the moment of firing, the call would come to “pull the finger out.”
(Another more modern explanation prefers the remark to refer to advice among the military regarding intimate foreplay.)
After World War II the expression moved into general—but subdued—use to indicate a need for more energetic activity, or to finish an allotted task more quickly.
Its most prominent outing came in October 1961, when London’s Daily Mail reported that Prince Philip, while addressing a meeting of British industrialists, said:
I could use any one of the several stock phrases or platitudes about this. But I prefer one I picked up during the war. It is brief and to the point: Gentlemen, I think it is about time we pulled our fingers out.
(Let the) punishment fit the crime
Sir William Gilbert’s clever words to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s perfectly suited tune (in The Mikado) could well be the foremost example in the public mind of this expression.
But in fact Gilbert and Sullivan were following many footsteps after the Roman politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, who in 70 BC when writing about law and crime opined:
Noxiae poena par esto—Let the punishment be proportionate to the offence.
Purple prose
Long before Mills and Boon, there were those who viewed with disfavor any over-ornate writing with extravagant use of flowery language. One such was the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, aka Horace, who in 18 BC wrote Ars Poetica, criticising “purpureus pannus.” This was translated into English by Queen Elizabeth I as “purple prose,” which ever since has been a descriptor for what in later times is sometimes called pulp fiction.
See also It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Q
(On the) qt
It means reliable information given confidentially. How this came to be qt is unclear unless it is simply the first and last letters of quiet.The term was in use late in the nineteenth century, and came to print in A Mummer’s Wife (1884) by Irish novelist George Moore. In a conversation between Kate and Miss Mender, Kate says:
‘Mr Lennox will be here on Monday. I’ve just got a letter from him.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad; for perhaps, this time, it will be possible to have one spree on the strict q.t.’
Kate was thinking of exactly the same thing, but Miss Mender’s crude expression took the desire out of her heart, and she remained silent.
Why Kate (or George Moore) thought of “qt” as crude, we don’t know. Soon after, it came to be regarded as discreet but entirely respectable.
Read my lips
The term attracted international comment at the 1988 Republican National Convention when George Bush accepted the nomination to run for President. Peggy Noonan was George Bush’s speechwriter, and she included the expression in his outline of one predicted policy: “Read my lips—no new taxes,” and the sound bite went around the world.
But the line predates that occasion by at least thirty years. In 1958 songwriter Joe Greene composed “Read My Lips,” which was recorded for Liberty Records with the Russ Garcia orchestra (LRP-3062). Greene was a respected songwriter whose output was recorded by an A-list: Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Julie London, Fats Waller, the Mills Brothers, Stan Kenton, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, even the Muppets. Greene’s line “Read my lips” moved into rock vernacular and other songs arose that appropriated the title. It was also borrowed by a movie, a racehorse, a sports coach, Coronation Street dialogue, and—eventually—an American President-to-be.
(In Britain, seven years after George Bush’s use of the term, Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett caused a stir at the 1995 Labour Party conference by declaring: “Watch my lips: no selection, either by examination or interview, under a Labour government.” It was later explained that in attempting to parody Bush he had forgotten to include the word “further” before “selection.”)
Reality television
Strictly speaking, reality television is any telecast that shows something happening in real life: Olympic Games, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, any sports match or political debate. But since the 1950s, the term reality television began to apply to contrived situations intended to entertain and fiercely pretending to be reality but in fact carefully arranged to occur within forty-four minutes, pause for commercial breaks, and occasionally have an invisible band or orchestra lurking somewhere in the wings.
The use of “real” people began innocently enough with entertainment programs. In 1950 American TV producer Ralph Edwards initiated both Truth or Consequences and This is Your Life.
By 1954 Art Linkletter was hosting People Are Funny. All three programs showed—apart from the host—only ordinary people, unscripted and spontaneous. Linkletter told the Milwaukee Journal:
Ralph Edwards and I invented reality television.
Later the term came to be regarded as pejorative, as the so-called reality shows became structured, with considerable modification and editing being involved. Linkletter said of this that he and Ralph Edwards never demeaned people: “We never dreamed they’d have people eating bugs on TV.”
Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic
The first known mention of the Titanic’s deck chairs came from Elizabeth Carpenter, who was press aide to Mrs. Lyndon Johnson in the White House. When interviewed by the New York Times in January 1969, Ms Carpenter commented:
All the new people want an office close to the President’s. You should see them scramble. It’s like fighting for a dec
k chair on the Titanic.
Her comment didn’t directly link the chairs with any suggestion of disaster. But musician and conductor Joseph Eger did.Writing to the New York Times in May 1972, referring to the Lincoln Center’s plans for young people’s performing arts, Joseph Eger said:
Administrators are running around straightening out deck chairs while the Titanic goes down.
Eger’s deck chair image caught people’s imagination, and one of its better-known utterances came from Rogers Morton, public relations manager for Gerald Ford’s election campaign in 1976. After Ford had lost five out of six primaries, Morton produced this variation on Joseph Eger’s remark:
I’m not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.
In later general usage, deck chairs were favored over furniture.
(Incidentally, the term’s leap into popularity was seen as a marketing ploy by at least one enterprising entrepreneur: the Titanic Deck Chair Company of Nantucket produced accurate replicas of Titanic deck chairs as trendy items of garden furniture.)
Red sky at night . . . shepherd’s delight