by Max Cryer
Straight from the horse’s mouth
A horse’s age can be assessed by examining its teeth. So whatever the age a horse trader tells a prospective customer, a look at the teeth will quickly show if the trader is telling the truth—the horse’s mouth is the highest authority.
From this simple fact there developed a sense that information said to be from the horse’s mouth was liable to be accurate, rather than skewed.
The expression had been known to stable hands and racing aficionados for decades. But it took P.G. Wodehouse to put the term into print as a metaphor for the first time, in August 1928 (“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald,” Strand Magazine).
Archibald Mulliner is in love with the imperious Aurelia Cammarleigh, and he finds himself outside her curtained window just as she is about to tell her friend what she really thinks of him:
The prospect of getting the true facts—straight, as it were, from the horse’s mouth—held him fascinated.
Wodehouse was followed closely by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932):
Straight from the horse’s mouth into the note-book, the boys scribbled like mad.
(Wodehouse must have liked the term; he used it again later in Right Ho, Jeeves:
I bunged my foot sedulously on the accelerator in order to get to Aunt Dahlia with the greatest possible speed and learn the inside history straight from the horse’s mouth.)
Strictly for the birds
This expression of disbelief or dismissal must have been known—at least in Illinois—by the early 1940s, but was not perhaps in universal use. Then came its first known public expression in October 1944 when the “Sports Roundup” column in a Massachusetts newspaper, the Lowell Sun, interviewed a sergeant in the military about sports at the Camp Ellis Internment Camp in Illinois. Sergeant Buck Erickson said:
Don’t take too seriously this belief that we have football at Camp Ellis solely for the entertainment of the personnel—that’s strictly for the birds. The army is a winner . . . the army likes to win—that’s the most fortunate thing in the world for America.
(Sergeant Erickson may have been being polite for the occasion: Christine Ammer’s The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms tells that the more vulgar version of the term is “shit for the birds,” alluding to birds’ habit of picking seeds out of horse droppings. Hence the notion that something “for the birds” is worthless.)
Strike while the iron is hot
This is not the iron you use on shirts, but the old-fashioned blacksmith sort. When the blacksmith wishes to shape a horseshoe from a strip of iron, he must first heat it, and then bend it while it is hot.
But Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to use it in the metaphorical sense: when circumstances seem propitious for a particular outcome, then action should be taken. In The Tale of Melibee (c.1386), the young people scorn the wisdom of their elders and clamour for war, crying out:
Whil that iren is hoot, men sholden smyte.
Superman
The concept—if not the realization—of a human more than normally powerful dates to 1883, when German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the notion of the Übermensch in Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Twenty-two years later the same idea surfaced in English. George Bernard Shaw knew of Nietzsche’s work, but was cautious about translating the word über. He settled on super, and “superman” appeared for the first time in 1905 as the title of Shaw’s play Man and Superman.
Shaw’s superman was one who could both direct and follow the will of the universe while suppressing his own. Both Shaw and Nietzsche envisaged the “super” part of their super-being as mental and moral, rather than physical, strength.
Using the name borrowed from Shaw, but combining it with an image somewhat more accessible to the general public, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the athletic figure of Superman. He was first launched in 1933, and started appearing in Action Comics in 1938. He grew into an American icon, the central figure of countless cartoons, radio shows, films and a musical.
The adventures of Superman were easier on the audience’s patience than the play from which his name came—Shaw’s Man and Superman lasts on stage over four hours.
Supermarket
Derived from Latin, the original meaning of “super” is “above,” which survives in words like superintendent. But since George Bernard Shaw’s creation of the term superman, in English the prefix “super” has acquired the meaning of great size, outstanding qualities, and exceeding the norm.
Large shops that differed by supplying a wide range of foodstuffs rather than a single speciality began to appear spasmodically in the United States as early as 1916. By 1930 there were many chain groceries, complete with parking lots, and not dissimilar to their modern counterparts. But in general they were referred to as “groceterias,” although the Big Bear stores sometimes used the expression “Super Market.”
In November 1933 William H. Albers opened a shop in Cincinnati with a sign over it saying Supermarket, the first known public display of the word. Historians William H.Young and Nancy K. Young in their survey The 1930s assign Albers’ shop as the first formal corporate use of the term with the registration Albers Super Mkts. Inc.
Supermodel
George Bernard Shaw attached the word “super” to a man in 1905. Prominent actors and sportsmen were being described as “superstars” from 1936. Soon after, in 1942, the Chicago Daily Tribune announced that “Super” models would be appearing in a fashion parade.
Then in 1953 a book appeared written by New York model agent and writer Clyde Matthews Dressner called So You Want To Be A Model! Predicting success for those who had the requisites, his advice included:
She will be a super-model, but the girl in her will be like the girl in you—quite ordinary, but ambitious.
It was a rather extraordinary misunderstanding: that a supermodel would be quite ordinary.
But Dressner’s use of the hyphenated term super-model was the earliest known step toward usage, which gradually abandoned the hyphen and sometimes adopted an upper-case S—the Supermodel.
And a new form of aristocracy was born.
(A similar case of dropping the hyphen occurred in 1969 when Andrew Lloyd Webber saw a photo caption describing Tom Jones as an (un-hyphenated) “superstar.” Webber attached the same label to Jesus and the hyphen disappeared.)
Suppose they gave a war and nobody came
In 1936, arising from the Great Depression, American poet Carl Sandburg wrote the poem “The People,Yes,” in which a little girl is depicted seeing her first military parade. She speaks the line:
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
In 1961 a letter published in the Washington Post misquoted Sandburg’s line as: “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came.” Journalist Charlotte E. Keyes came across the letter, and not realising that the Sandburg quote was inaccurate, cut it out and kept it. In 1966 when she wrote an article for McCall’s about an anti-war protestor, she used the (mis)quote as the article’s title.This put the inadvertently adjusted line into wide circulation, and despite its inaccuracy, it surpassed the original in familiarity and soon went into common use.
Survival of the fittest
Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) clarified his theory that every species develops or evolves from a previous one by a process of natural selection. The book was studied by British philosopher Herbert Spencer, an esteemed commentator on ethics, religion, economics, politics, philosophy, biology, sociology, and psychology. He too was interested in evolution, and in 1864 published his Principles of Biology that included his new term “survival of the fittest,” which he compared with Darwin’s natural selection.
Eventually Darwin decided that survival of the fittest was an acceptable interpretation of his own theories, and he included it in the fifth edition of his own work.
Suspension of disbelief
When a narrative has an element of fantasy that requires the observer to set practical
judgement aside and become involved in the story in spite of its implausibility.
The term was created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Biographia Literaria (1817). His wish was that a reader of poetry would cooperate with:
... a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
Svengali
Svengali was a charismatic fictional figure with a controlling personality focused on organising the behavior of someone less resilient. The name is still widely used when referring to certain sporting coaches, parents with show-business ambitions for their children, and policy advisers in politics.
The name arose after British artist George du Maurier made a suggestion to his friend Henry James about a plot involving a manipulative personality who exerts a hypnotic power over someone weaker. But James didn’t like the idea.When Du Maurier began to have trouble drawing because of failing eyesight, James suggested that he try writing his own prose fiction, rather than illustrating other people’s works.
Du Maurier took up the suggestion and his 1894 novel Trilby was the result.
Trilby was a sensation—the story of a young woman with an indifferent singing voice who was transformed into a vocal star by the power of Svengali, her Hungarian mentor.
Professor Stephen Connor, Academic Director at Birbeck College, London, comments that:
The name Svengali is one of Du Maurier’s happiest inspirations; suggesting some Nordic-Oriental cross-breeding, it also has wisps of the words ‘English,’ ‘angel’, ‘sanguinary’ and ‘vengeance’ in it. Crossword addicts will spot straight away that it can almost be unzipped into the word ‘enslaving,’ as well as, disconcertingly, forming a perfect anagram of the modern phrase ‘sang live.’
Echoes of the Trilby-Svengali relationship recur in Gaston Leroux’s novel Phantom of the Opera (1911) and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912).
Tabloid journalism
The word tabloid was invented in 1884 by Henry Solomon Wellcome of Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company to describe a new kind of concentrated medicinal tablet.
In 1896 Irish-born Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) launched a London newspaper called Daily Mail, selfdescribed as “The Busy Man’s Daily Newspaper.” Its innovations included banner headlines, a more economical and easy to read prose style, considerable coverage of sports, and the inclusion of news specifically for women.
Because the new newspaper style was compressed, compact, economical in size, with contents concentrated into easily assimilated form, Harmsworth referred to it as “tabloid,” like the new pill.
The word’s association with compressed medicines rapidly faded and instead became firmly affixed to newspaper style. Initially referring only to size and accessibility of content, the term slowly became associated with a particular style of sensational journalism and took on its pejorative connotation.
Take care of number one
Referring to oneself as number one sprang into print in 1829 with the publication of Frederick Marryat’s Adventures in the Life of Frank Mildmay. Young seaman Mildmay came to be in charge of catering on a ship sparsely supplied with food, resulting in quarrelsome mealtimes:
Aware of the dangers and difficulties of my position,
I was prepared accordingly. On the first day that I shared
provisions, I took very good care of number one . . .
Take down a peg
There are murky interpretations of what “peg” may have referred to in the early centuries of the expression’s use. It might have been the pegs used to display a ship’s flags (the higher the pegged flag, the greater the prestige), or a marker peg in a wine barrel. But whatever peg it was, by the late nineteenth century the term had settled into meaning that the bubble of someone’s arrogance was about to be punctured.
In this context, it appeared in the novel Marcella by Australianborn Mary Augusta Arnold, a prolific novelist writing as Mrs. Humphry Ward. In 1894 she wrote:
I knew perfectly well that she had said to herself, ‘Now then I must take that proud girl down a peg, or she will be no use to anybody;’—and I had somehow to put up with it.
Take the cake
Cake has always been perceived as a treat, but it is not clear whether “taking the cake” derives from American high-strut dancing competitions, resulting in the winning of a cake.
Around 420 BC, Aristophanes refers to a cake as a symbol of winning, and several centuries later Shakespeare referred to “cakes and ale” as a part of good living.
So cake had a long history of signifying an honor or marking a special occasion. In 1836 prolific writer William T. Porter published “A Quarter Race in Kentucky” in the New York magazine Spirit of the Times and wrote:
They got up a horse and fifty dollars in money a side, each one to start and ride his own horse, the winning horse take the cakes.
Early use of the term in America sometimes made the cakes plural, but the version currently in use, with just one cake, came from Theodore Dreiser in Sister Carrie (1900) after Carrie tells Drouet she can no longer live with him:
“Well that’s a fine finish,” said Drouet. “Pack up and pull out, eh? You take the cake. I bet you were knocking about with Hurstwood or you wouldn’t act like that.”
(By extension, the cake is sometimes replaced by “the biscuit.”)
Taking an early bath (or shower)
During a sports match a participant might leave the field because of injury, or be sent off after committing a misdemeanor.
During the 1960s prolific British sports commentator Eddie Waring popularized the thinly disguised euphemism “He’s goin’ for an early bath” as if the player was merely heading for the changing rooms ahead of the full team.
The term moved into wider use and is applied to anyone leaving a situation earlier than originally intended—and against their inclination to remain.
Teach your grandmother to suck eggs
There have been several versions down the centuries: Don’t teach your grandmother to spin (from 1542, when all grandmothers knew how to spin), or to grope ducks (!), or to steal sheep, or to sup sour milk.
Sucking eggs settled in 1738 with Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation:
Go teach your Grannam to suck Eggs.
Teddy bears
In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt (aka “Teddy”) inspected the boundary between Mississippi and Louisiana, and combined the official trip with some bear hunting. By the fifth and final day of the hunt, the President had still failed to bag a bear. So when another man in the hunting party had the opportunity to capture a bear cub, he did so and tied it to a tree before offering Roosevelt the opportunity to shoot it. The President declared this was unsporting, and firmly declined to shoot the cub.
The incident aroused considerable publicity, very favorable toward the president. Confectionery shop owner Morris Michtom suggested to his wife that she make a toy bear to decorate their shop window. So she made a cuddly little bear out of velvet with shoe-button eyes.They called it “Teddy’s Bear.” The single toy in the window was a huge success, and orders were placed for dozens more.
The Michtoms sent their first bear to President Roosevelt and acquired permission to use his name.They closed the sweet shop and in 1903 set up a toy company which made literally millions of teddy bears. All over the world, children began a love affair with the charming toy named by Morris and Rose Michtom. One of their original 1903 bears is in the Smithsonian Museum.
(In 1921 A.A. Milne bought a teddy bear at Harrods for his son Christopher Robin, who called it Edward instead of Teddy. Five years later, Milne began his stories about his son’s collection of stuffed toys, centred around Edward Bear, whose nickname Winnie the Pooh came from the black bear Winnie in London zoo, and a swan the family had named Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne’s original teddy bear Edward is on display in the New York Public Library.)
(The) Teflon President (or Prime Minister, CEO,
MP, Senator . . . )
Democratic representative in the House of Representatives Patricia Schroeder addressed the floor of the House in 1983, saying:
Ronald Reagan is attempting a great breakthrough in political technology—he has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency. He sees to it that nothing sticks to him.
The description was so accessible it became appropriated and widely used; Reagan was soon being described as “Teflon-coated” or “the Teflon President,” or said to be wearing a “Teflon suit.” The term was also quickly applied to any major public figures who seemed to weather political storms unscathed.
There but for the grace of God go I
A modified version of the remark passed by sixteenth-century preacher John Bradford, whose Protestant beliefs fell foul of the impassioned Catholic monarch Queen Mary Tudor. Imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1553, Bradford witnessed first-hand Mary’s persecution of those who wavered from her Catholic doctrines. While imprisoned in his cell Bradford watched as Protestant prisoners were taken to the executioner, whereupon he is reputed to have remarked:
There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford.
In time, Queen Mary with reference only to her personal interpretation of the grace of God, decreed his fate and John Bradford was led to his own death (by burning) in 1555.