Red Herrings and White Elephants

by Albert Jack

  To Fiddle While Rome Burns is a phrase often used to describe somebody being occupied by small details while a greater disaster is taking place unnoticed. Roman legend has it that in AD 64 Emperor Nero wanted to see what Troy had looked like as it burned to the ground, so he set light to Rome. It was said that he watched the blaze for six days and seven nights while he played his fiddle and enjoyed himself. Nero strongly denied the claims and blamed the disaster on the Christians, who were then ruthlessly persecuted. Historians have confirmed Nero was nowhere near Rome when the fire started, supporting his defence. Instead he was probably out enjoying himself at the School of Charm run by Caligula.

  To Go With The Flow means not to have a strong opinion and thus follow the majority. Often thought to be of American origin, the phrase in fact predates the Yanks by about 1,600 years. Marcus Aurelius was crowned Emperor of Rome on 7 March 161. His turbulent reign was characterised by war and disaster but also, above all, intellectual thought. Marcus dealt with his turmoil through stoic philosophy and much of this is expressed in his writings The Meditations, in which he displays the tension he felt between his position as emperor and his prevailing feeling of overall inadequacy. Much of Marcus’s philosophy is based around the flow of thought and the flow of happiness and he concluded that ‘all things flow naturally’. Marcus also expressed the opinion it was better to ‘go with the flow’ rather than try to change the natural course of events.

  The phrase Beware Of Greeks Bearing Gifts is a friendly warning against trickery and deception. This phrase refers to the most famous Greek gift of all, the Trojan Horse. During the Trojan Wars the Greeks had besieged the city of Troy for over ten years. Finally, as they made plans to leave, they built a huge wooden horse as an offering to the gods and a sign of peace. The horse was left at the gates of Troy and, once the Greeks had withdrawn, the people of Troy opened their gates, for the first time in a decade, to receive the apparently harmless gift. However, as soon as the horse was inside, Greek soldiers poured out of the wooden structure and destroyed the city. Virgil, in the Aeneid (II.49) has Laocoon warn the Trojans about accepting the horse, saying, ‘I still fear the Greeks, even when they offer us gifts.’

  When something Hangs By A Thread it means a situation could change in an instant. The phrase alludes to the sword of Damocles that was hung from a ceiling by a single hair. The Roman philosopher Cicero tells the story that in 400 BC Dionysius the Elder, ruler of Syracuse, became tired of one of his courtiers, Damocles, for his slimy bootlicking. To remind the young servile how fortunate his position was, and how tenuous it might be, Dionysius sat Damocles beneath the sword during a banquet. Not only did the sword ‘hang by a thread’ but so did Damocles’s life. Cicero used the incident to illustrate that he understood how tenuous his own privileged position was.

  When somebody claims they Don’t Give A Jot they are implying they care nothing at all about a circumstance. The phrase is thousands of years old and is exactly the same as the expression I Don’t Give One Iota. The origins for both can be found in the early Greek language. A jot is the letter ‘iota’ which is the smallest in the Greek alphabet. It was used at the time to imply ‘the least of anything’.

  A situation that is in the Lap Of The Gods is one where the outcome is unclear and cannot be influenced in any meaningful way. Early suggestions for the origin of this saying predictably pointed to the practice in many cultures of leaving gifts with statues of gods in the hope of answered prayers. But Homer’s Iliad probably holds the answer. In the story Patrocolos, a friend of Achilles, is killed by the Trojans who then intended to parade his severed head to demoralise their opponents. With the battle in the balance, and the outcome uncertain, Automedon declared, ‘These things lie on the knees of the gods.’ On hearing this Achilles returned and led an unexpected rout of the Trojans, confirming to all that the gods were well and truly on the side of the famous warrior.

  To Lick Something Into Shape means to mould something (or someone) to suit a particular task or situation. Bizarrely, some races used to believe that some animals, particularly bears, gave birth to formless offspring and then licked them into the shape of their breed. This is possibly because many animal offspring are born covered in a thick afterbirth, sometimes making them almost unrecognisable until a mother has cleaned it off. Around AD 150 Aulus Gellius wrote, ‘For he said that as the bear brought forth her young formless and misshapen, by licking gave it form and shape.’ And we thought the Romans were knowledgeable.

  Lily Livered is a term used for cowards, or cowardly behaviour. The ancient Greeks had the custom of sacrificing an animal on the eve of each battle and the animal’s liver was considered a major omen. If it was red and full of blood all the signs were positive but, if the liver was pale and lily-coloured, it was thought to signify bad tidings. The Greeks also believed the liver of a cowardly person was pale and lily-coloured.

  When a person is described as Mealy Mouthed the implication is they are unwilling to speak plainly or openly about something, in case what they have to say offends. It is often used as a derogatory term for somebody who is trying to please others. Its origin can be found as a phonetic adaptation from the ancient Greek ‘melimuthos’ which means, literally, ‘honey speak’.

  To make a Mountain Out Of A Molehill means to exaggerate something out of all proportion. The original phrase was ‘to make an elephant out of a fly’ and dates back to the ancient Greek satirist Lucian, who lived in AD 2. But in 1548 Nicholas Udall wrote Paraphrase Of Erasmus which includes the line: ‘Sophists of Greece could, through their copiousness, make an elephant of a fly and a mountain of a molehill.’ The original expression has long been forgotten but Udall’s replacement remains a commonly used phrase.

  The Rule Of Thumb is a rough estimate based on experience rather than formal calculation. The expression has been in wide use since the late 1600s and there are several suggestions for its origin. One of them emanates from the ale-makers where, in the days before accurate thermometers were available, the brewer would test the temperature of fermenting beers by dipping his thumb in. If this was the phrase’s origin one would expect to find pubs called The Brewer’s Thumb, but I can find none.

  Another suggestion dates back to the Middle Ages when it was legal for a man to beat his wife with a cane no thicker than his thumb. Evidence of this comes to light in the Biographical Dictionary Of The Judges Of England written by Edward Foss in1864. In the text Foss suggests that a ‘husband may beat his wife, so that the stick with which he administers the castigation is not thicker than his thumb’. It should also have been possible for a wife to beat the man who put that law on the statute book with a stick no thicker than he was. Instead we go back to the Romans who used the tip of the thumb (from the knuckle upward) as a unit of measurement, as any thumb would fit roughly 12 times into the next unit of measurement, a foot. There is definitely a connection here, as the French word for inches is ‘pouces’ which translates as ‘thumb’ and that remained a standard unit of measurement until metrification. The Roman bricklayers used their thumbs to estimate measurements and the phrase has been in standard use ever since.

  If a person is Not Worth His Salt they are regarded as not very good at their job and not worth the wages. During the days of the Roman Empire salt was an expensive commodity and soldiers were actually paid partly in salt, which they carried in leather pouches. This payment was known as ‘salarium’, from the Latin word ‘sal’, meaning salt. The modern word for wages, ‘salary’, also originates from this source.

  The origin of the phrase Taken With A Pinch Of Salt goes as far back as AD 77 and the Latin Addito Salis Grano written by Pliny the Elder. The elderly Pliny had discovered the story of King Mithridates VI, who once ruled Pontus and built up his immunity to poisoning by fasting and then taking regular doses of poison with a single grain of salt in an effort to make it more palatable.

  Scallywag is a word used particularly around the Liverpool area, to describe a boisterous, energetic and di
sruptive young male who has little regard for authority. The word started life as ‘scurryvag’, which comes from the Latin phrase ‘scurra vagus’ meaning ‘wandering fool’. In London the word ‘scurryvag’ was used to describe a scurrilous vagrant (a merging of the two words) which later became scallywag thanks to the Liverpool accent.

  To Spill The Beans is a widely used term for giving away a secret. A tradition that began in ancient Greece for electing a new member to a private club was to give each existing member a white and brown bean with which to cast their votes. The white bean was a yes vote and the brown meant an objection. The beans were then secretly placed in a jar and the prospective member would never know how many people voted either for or against him. Unless, that is, the jar was knocked over and the beans spilled. Then the club members’ secret would be out.

  Spondulics is a slang word for money. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is a word of ‘fanciful origin’ but my Greek friends have managed to trace it back to their ancient language and the word ‘spondulikos’, which derives from ‘spondulos’, a type of seashell. Apparently this shell was once used as a currency and is very likely to have been the origin of our slang phrase. In addition, the Greek word for spine, or vertebrae, is ‘spondylo’ and a stack of coins could resemble a spine. This suggestion is supported by John Mitchell in his book A Manual Of The Art Of Prose Composition, first published in 1867, in which he lists ‘spondulics’ as a ‘coin pile, ready for counting’.

  Leaving No Stone Unturned is a phrase we use to describe having made all possible efforts to complete a task. After the Greeks defeated the Persians at the battle of Plataea in 477 BC, Polycrates set about finding the treasure he thought had been left in the tent of the Persian general Mardonius. After searching everywhere he turned to the oracle at Delphi who advised him to ‘move every stone’ in his search. Polycrates took that advice and subsequently found the treasure. The phrase soon became popular and only a few years later, in 410 BC, Aristophanes called it ‘that old proverb’. At nearly 2,500 years old, ‘no stone unturned’ may even be our oldest idiom.

  To Swear On Your Testicles (stop laughing at the back) is an old phrase dating back to the Romans and their apparent courtroom practice of swearing the truth of a statement on their testicles. In fact, there is some truth in this, as the Latin word for a witness is testis, which is taken from the old Indo-European word for the number three. The Romans regarded an impartial witness, who could look at events in an objective way, as a third party, which is how testis developed as the word for witness. But they did also use the word ‘testis’ as a witness to a man’s virility, which is how the word testicle also evolved and how the two are connected. But, when a Roman was swearing on his testicles, he was actually swearing on his witness. No doubt this has had Latin students sniggering for generations.

  To Thread Your Way through a crowd is an old English phrase dating back to the mid-1500s. Back then the good and the great would entertain themselves for hours in a new modern puzzle called mazes. However, many people soon realised it was just as hard to find their way out of a maze as it was to reach the centre. Some adopted the practice of taking a clew (a cheap yarn or thread) and fixing one end at the beginning, enabling them to find their way back out again and that lead to the term ‘threading your way through’. But this wasn’t a new trick, even in the 1500s. It was borrowed from the ancient Greek myth in which Theseus finds his way back out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth after slaying the beast, by using a ‘clew’ of thread. A slight variation of the word ‘clew’ led to ‘clue’ becoming used in modern English language as the term for anything helping to unravel puzzles or mysteries. The word ‘maze’ itself stems from the word ‘amazing’, which was used to describe the popular new game.

  When somebody is described as Two Faced it is suggested they are hypocritical, prepared to share one opinion with a person and then a conflicting viewpoint with another. The inference is they have a separate face for each contrary opinion. Janus was a Roman god with responsibility for the gates of heaven. Legend tells us he had two faces, one in the usual position and one on the back of his head, enabling him to see in both directions at once. From that Roman legend grew the idea that anybody able to see two sides to an argument, and agree with both, must have two faces just like Janus. This extends itself to meaning any person who is able to say one thing to one person and a conflicting thing to another must also need two faces, like Janus.

  To Set Off On The Wrong Foot means to start something badly. This phrase finds us back with the Romans and their superstitions about left-sided things being evil and guided by evil spirits (the Latin word for left is ‘sinister’). Gaius Petronius (AD 27–66), author of Satyricon and Emperor Nero’s adviser in matters of luxury and extravagance, insisted his fellow Romans only ever entered or left a building by the right foot. Such was his obsession that guards were placed at the entrance to every public building to ensure his rule was obeyed. Most Romans shared Petronius’s belief that to start a day by leaving the house by the left foot meant an unlucky day during which disaster might strike. (See also Get Out Of Bed On The Wrong Side and Ears Are Burning.)

  Get Out Of Bed On The Wrong Side is a phrase we use when someone is being grumpy or bad tempered during the day. An ancient superstition suggests that evil spirits lay during the night on a particular side of the bed. It was unlucky to emerge in the morning on that side as it would mean those evil spirits and their influence would possess the body during its waking hours and this would only be put right the following dawn by not repeating the mistake. The wrong side, incidentally, is the left-hand side. (See also Set Off On The Wrong Foot.)

  6: SPORT

  Across The Board means all encompassing, wide-ranging and including everyone or everything. At 19th-century race meetings large boards would be used to display the odds on a horse to come first, second or third in a given race. A popular bet was to place an even amount of money on one horse to finish first, second or third. This was known as an ‘across the board bet’. Obviously the bookmakers’ odds would be calculated and only when a horse finished in the position a bookmaker least expected it to would a punter win more than the sum of his three stakes.

  All Over Bar The Shouting is used when any controversial event is said to be technically settled, but arguments about the outcome continue, albeit with little effect on the result. In use since 1842, the phrase is from the world of sport, in particular boxing. Once a referee’s decision was made, the crowds would either cheer or argue the judgement and shout appeals. But usually the referee’s verdict stood and the contest would be over, apart from the subsequent cheering and shouting.

  When suggestions are Bandied About it means they are either put up for discussion or repeated by one party to many. For example, ‘They bandied about the suggestion all afternoon before deciding not to proceed any further with it’ or ‘The lies she bandied about all over town did his reputation no good at all’. For the origin of the use of this word we travel to France and the game of Bander, which was an early form of tennis and involved hitting a ball to and fro. Later, in the 1600s, the Irish invented a team game that formed the origins of hockey, which required a group of people ‘bandying’ a ball between them. They called the sport ‘Bander’ after the French game because of the similarities between the two ideas. The crooked (or bowed) stick they used led to the term ‘bandy-legged’ being applied to those with bow legs.

  When someone has Lost Their Bottle they have lost their nerve and their bravery. This phrase originates from the world of bare-knuckle prizefighting during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a fighter’s corner one of his seconds was known as ‘the bottle man’ and his job was to supply water to a fighter between rounds. Without water a fighter was unable to continue and sometimes it was known for a bottleman to be asked to walk away and leave when a fighter was taking a beating, to provide an excuse for him not continuing. The phrase ‘lost his bottleman’ was later shortened and widely used to descr
ibe cowardly behaviour.

  Not enough room to Swing A Cat is a reference to small tight spaces. It is often thought the phrase originates from 17th-century sailors needing space in which they could swing the cat o’ nine tails but there is other evidence from two centuries earlier. Cat lovers read no further. In the 15th century, there was a ‘sport’ involving the swinging of cats (by the tail) into the air where they would become moving targets for archers at fetes, fairs and country festivals. Crowded festivals would be described as having no room to ‘swing the cat’.

  To knock the Daylights out of somebody would be to put them on the receiving end of a pretty impressive beating. In days gone by ‘daylights’ was slang for a person’s eyes. In early bare-knuckle boxing parlance, to darken a fighter’s daylights would mean to give him a black eye, and to beat the daylights out of him meant both eyes were so badly swollen he could no longer see.

  Down To The Wire is used to describe a contest, sporting or otherwise, where the outcome will not be determined until the very last. Before the days of televised horse racing, American and British racetracks would string a wire across the finishing line above the riders’ heads. A steward would then be placed at a vantage point, looking down the line so that a winner could be more easily established during neck-and-neck finishes. In 1889 the following appeared in Scribers Magazine: ‘As the end of the stand was reached, Timarch worked up to Petrel, and the two raced down to the wire, cheered on by the applause of the spectators. They ended the first half mile of the race head and head, passing lapped together under the wire, and beginning in earnest the mile which was yet to be traversed.’ The race had gone ‘down to the wire’ and the expression has been widely used since then.