The phrase 'jot or tittle' is somewhat tautological, as both jot and tittle refer to tiny quantities. It has passed into English via William Tindale's translation of the New Testament in 1526. It appears there in Matthew 5:18:
One iott or one tytle of the lawe shall not scape.
The more familiar language of the King James Version (1611) renders that verse as:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
A jot is the name of the least letter of an alphabet or the smallest part of a piece of writing. It is the Anglicized version of the Greek iota - the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, which corresponds to the Roman 'i'. This, in turn, was derived from the Hebrew word jod, or yodr, which is the the smallest letter of the square Hebrew alphabet. Apart from its specialist typographical meaning, we still use the word jot more generally to mean 'a tiny amount'. Hence, when we have a brief note to make, we 'jot it down'.
A tittle, rather appropriately for a word which sounds like a combination of tiny and little, is smaller still. It refers to a small stroke or point in writing or printing. In classical Latin this applied to any accent over a letter, but is now most commonly used as the name for the dot over the letter 'i'. It is also the name of the dots on dice. In medieval calligraphy the tittle was written as quite large relative to the stem of the 'i'. Since fixed typeface printing was introduced in the 15th century the tittle has been rendered smaller.
The use of the word 'dot' as a small written mark didn't begin until the 18th century. We may have been told at school to dot our i's; Chaucer and Shakespeare would have been told to tittle them.
Ultima edición por Saskia el Mie May 09, 2007 7:11 pm; editado 1 vez
Dom Mar 04, 2007 9:08 pm
Saskia
Registrado: 15 Mar 2006
Mensajes: 1494
A tinker's damn
Meaning
An unimportant or worthless thing.
Origin
There's some debate over whether this phrase should be tinker's dam - a small dam of solder made by tinkers when mending pans, or tinker's damn - a tinker's curse, considered of little significance because tinkers were reputed to swear habitually.
If we go back to 1877, in the Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, Edward Knight put forward this definition:
"Tinker's-dam - a wall of dough raised around a place which a plumber desires to flood with a coat of solder. The material can be but once used; being consequently thrown away as worthless."
That version of events has gone into popular folklore and many people believe it. After all, any definition written as early has 1877 has to be true doesn't it?
Knight may well have been a fine mechanic but there has to be some doubt about his standing as an etymologist. There is no corroborative evidence for his speculation and he seems to have fallen foul of the curse of folk etymologists - plausibility. If an ingenious story seems to neatly fit the bill then it must be true. Well, in this case, it isn't. The Victorian preference of 'dam' over 'damn' may also owe something to coyness over the use of a profanity in polite conversation.
That interpretation of the phrase was well enough accepted in Nevada in 1884 for the Reno Gazette to report its use in the defence of a Methodist preacher who was accused of the profanity of using the term 'tinker's dam':
"It isn't profane any more to say tinker's dam. The minister stated that a tinker's dam was a dam made by itinerant menders of tinware on a pewter plate to contain the solder".
The same view was expressed in the Fitchburg Sentinel newspaper in 1874.
The problem with that interpretation is that all those accounts ignore an earlier phrase - 'a tinker's curse' (or cuss), which exemplified the reputation tinkers had for habitual use of profanity. This example from John Mactaggart's The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824, predates Knight's version in the popular language:
"A tinkler's curse she did na care what she did think or say."
In the Grant County Herald, Wisconsin, 1854, we have:
"There never was a book gotten up by authority and State pay, that was worth a tinker's cuss".
So, we can forget about plumbing. The earlier phrase simply migrated the short distance from curse to damn to give us the proper spelling of the phrase - tinker's damn.
The traditional greeting at Christmas - very commonly used on Christmas cards.
Origin
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You" was the verse that was shown on the first commercially available Christmas card in 1843. Christmases has been merry long before that though. The use of 'Merry Christmas' as a seasonal salutation dates back to at least 1565, when it appeared in The Hereford Municipal Manuscript:
"And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a mery Christmas & many."
1843 was also the date of the publication of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol and it was around that time, in the early part of the reign of Queen Victoria, that Christmas as we now know it was largely invented. The word merry was then beginning to take on its current meaning of 'jovial, and outgoing' (and, let's face it, probably mildly intoxicated). Prior to that, in the times when other 'merry' phrases were coined, for example, make merry (circa 1300), Merry England (circa 1400) and the merry month of May (1560s), merry had a different meaning, i.e. 'pleasant, peaceful and agreeable'.
That change in meaning is apparently viewed with disfavour by Queen Elizabeth II, who wishes her subjects a 'happy' rather than 'merry' Christmas in her annual Christmas broadcasts. The idea of a modern-day merry England is presumably unwelcome at the palace.
The best-known allusion to merriment at Christmas is the English carol God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The source of this piece isn't known. It was first published in William Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern in 1833, although versions of it probably existed as a folk-song and tune well before that but weren't written down. Sir Thomas Elyot, lists the phrase 'rest you merry' in his Dictionary in 1548:
"Aye, bee thou gladde: or joyfull, as the vulgare people saie Reste you mery."
It is often assumed that the carol's lyric portrays the wish that jovial gentlemen might enjoy repose and tranquility. The punctuation of the song suggests otherwise though - it's 'God rest ye merry, gentlemen', not 'God rest ye, merry gentlemen'. In this context 'to rest' doesn't mean 'to repose' but 'to keep, or remain as you are' - like the 'rest' in 'rest assured'.
'Rest ye merry' means 'remain peacefully content' and the carol contains the wish that God should grant that favour to gentlemen (gentlewomen were presumably busy in the kitchen). It isn't the 'rest' that is being given but the 'merry'. Anyone misreading that comma is in good company though. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen was the carol that Dickens was referring to in A Christmas Carol:
"The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror."
A race, usually a horse-race, in a direct line across countryside. The term has also migrated to other areas which involve transit from one specific point to another. For example, direct air transport from one city to another and the 'Point to Point Protocol' used in Internet communications.
Origin
'Point to point' horse-races were known originally as steeplechases and these were first run in Ireland. The earliest known reference to one in print is from a 1793 edition of The Sporting Magazine, although there are other reports which suggest the practice dates from 1752:
"The Hon. Mr. O'Hea and Captain Magrath ran a Steeple-chace, near Galloway."
Church steeples were used as the end point of races because they were prominent landmarks to aim for and could be seen over great distances. The races began informally as members of the hunting community kept their horses fit by racing from one steeple to another, over whatever hedges and ditches lay in their path. From the early 19th century steeplechases have been run over prepared tracks, with fences and water-jumps which mimic the natural obstacles. The best-known steeplechase is the annual Grand National, which has been run at the Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool since 1836. The name 'steeplechase' has been borrowed by both athletics and dog-racing to denote races that involve fences and water-jumps. The use of the term 'hurdle' for the fences used in such races derives from the name of the temporary sheep fences that would have been jumped in the original cross-country races.
The name 'point to point', which clearly alludes to the points of steeples, was coined in the 19th century and was initially synonymous with steeplechase. There is still considerable overlap between the two names although 'point to point' is now usually reserved for races that are run across country and steeplechase usually refers to races run on a track. The Times, March 1875 included the earliest known use of 'point to point' in print when it referred to a "Point to Point Steeple-chase".
Uses of the term 'point to point' which didn't involve horse-racing began in the 1930s. The Telegraph & Telephone Journal of that date used the term to describe radio communication:
"The State wireless services only undertake 'Ship-to-shore' and 'Point-to-point' internal traffic."
The much-repeated tale is that 'Posh' derives from the 'port out, starboard home' legend supposedly printed on tickets of passengers on P&O (Peninsula and Orient) passenger vessels that travelled between UK and India in the days of the Raj. Britain and India are both in the northern hemisphere so the port (left-hand side) berths were mostly in the shade when travelling out (easterly) and the starboard ones when coming back. So the best and most expensive berths were POSH, hence the term. A very plausible and attractive explanation and it would be nice to be able to confirm it. The belief was widespread enough in 1968 for it to have been included in the lyrics of the song 'Posh' in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:
O the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me
First cabin and captain's table regal company
Pardon the dust of the upper crust - fetch us a cup of tea
Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh
There is no evidence to confirm this story though and it appears to have been dreamed up retrospectively to match an existing meaning. Whoever thought it up must have been quite pleased with it, and it appeals to enough people to get repeated endlessly. It also panders to the popular craving for the employment of acronyms as the explanation of common phrases - golf ('gentlemen only, ladies forbidden'), cop ('constable on patrol') etc. These are nonsense but they keep cropping up. It's worth remembering that acronyms are a 20th century phenomenon and researchers are hard pressed to find any examples before the 1920s. The word acronym itself wasn't coined until the 1940s. Any such explanation of older words, like 'golf', or indeed 'posh', is sure to be false.
P&O say they have never issued such tickets and, although many tickets from that era still exist, no 'POSH' ones have been found. These have the status of an etymological Holy Grail and occasionally someone claims to have seen one. Needless to say that hasn't yet been backed up with any evidence. Mind you, even if this mode of travel were the source of the phrase, there's no particular reason that tickets would have been stamped with POSH, so the absence of such tickets doesn't prove anything. The lack of any citation of 'port out, starboard home' in any of the numerous letters and literary works that remain from the British Raj is a more convincing argument against that origin.
The true origin of 'posh' is uncertain. The term was used from the 1890s onward to mean a dandy. The first recording of 'posh' in print that seems to fit the current meaning of the word is a cartoon which contains this dialogue between an RAF officer and his mother, in Punch magazine, September 1918:
Oh, yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there."
"Whatever do you mean by 'posh', Gerald?"
"Don't you know? It's slang for 'swish'"
In his 1903 Tales of St. Austin's, P. G. Wodehouse used the word 'push' to mean much the same as we now use 'posh':
"That waistcoat... being quite the most push thing of the sort in Cambridge."
Posh is also the Romany word for money and this was current throughout the 19th century. This originally meant halfpenny though and it's a long way from there to poshness.
The English gentlemen poet Edward Fitzgerald is another possible source of the word. He had what newspapers of the day described as 'most unaccountable admiration and friendship' for his boatman Joseph Fletcher, who was known as 'Posh'. In Fitzgerald's words, Posh was "A great man. A man of the finest Saxon type, blue eyes, nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman might sigh to possess". Later writers have accounted for that admiration and, in these more permissive days, it wouldn't be necessary to read between the lines of Fitzgerald's quote.
Whatever the origin is, it isn't likely to match the appeal of the P&O story and, although it is evidently wrong, that's the one that people prefer to repeat.
To be at someone's beck and call is to be entirely subservient to them; to be responsive to their slightest request.
Origin
'Call' is used here with its usual meaning. 'Beck' is more interesting. The word, although current in English since the 14th century, isn't one that is found outside the phrase 'beck and call' these days. It is merely a shortened form of 'beckon', which we do still know well and understand to mean 'to signal silently, by a nod or motion of the hand or finger, indicating a request or command'.
If the term 'beck and call' had originated prior to the 14th century we we would presumably now say 'beckon and call'. It didn't though and the first recorded use of 'beck and call' in print is in McLaren's Sermons, 1875:
"Christ's love is not at the beck and call of our fluctuating affections."
That is straightforward enough. What brings the phrase to the attention of etymologists is the confusion that some people have between it and 'beckon call'. This supposed phrase is a simple mishearing of 'beck and call'. The mistake comes about because no one uses 'beck' any longer, whereas 'beckon' is commonplace.
'Beckon call' could be said not to be a phrase in English at all, but it is gaining some ground nevertheless. Google returns 28,000 hits for 'beckon call' and 474,000 for 'beck and call'.
The misspelling began in the USA in the early 20th century. For example, this early citation from The Modesto News-Herald, May 1929:
A crowd of several hundred people heard a stirring address by B. W. Gearhart, Fresno attorney and American Legion official. "Down through the history of American wars, from the Revolutionary to the recent World conflict." the speaker declared, "America always has had at its beckon call men who would give their all for their country that people might enjoy peace and freedom.
The rogue phrase still appears in print in newspapers. Here's a recent example from the London Daily Mirror, by Phil Differ and Jonathan Watson:
"He [football manager Dick Advocaat] told me what he was particularly looking forward to when he comes to Scotland and that's having the entire Scottish press at his beckon call and I promised he won't be disappointed."
Just because 'beckon call' is based on a mishearing that doesn't mean it won't one day become accepted as proper English. Other phrases, like 'beg the question' for instance are routinely used incorrectly by so many people that the incorrect usage has now become the standard. Let's hope 'beckon call' dies a natural death, not only because it is essentially just a spelling mistake but because its adoption would signal the last gasp of the enjoyable little word 'beck'.
Reprimand rowdy characters and warn them to stop behaving badly.
Origin
Since the early 19th century we have used 'read the riot act' as a figurative phrase to describe attempts to calm groups of rowdies - along the same lines as 'you noisy louts, don't you know there are people in here trying to sleep?'. It wasn't always so. Had we been 'reading the riot act' in 1715 we would have noticed capital letters. At that date there was a real Riot Act and it was frequently read in public.
In English law the control of unruly citizens has usually been the responsibility of local magistrates. Any group of twelve or more that the authorities didn't like the look of could be deemed a 'riotous and tumultuous assembly' and arrested if they didn't disperse within an hour of the Riot Act being read to them by a magistrate. This seems a little harsh, but in 18th century England the government was fearful of Jacobite mobs who threatened to rise up and overthrow the Hanoverian George I. The fear of rebellion was well-founded, as supporters of the deposed Stuarts did actually invade in 1715 and again in 1745. The 'Riot Act' was passed by the British government in 1714 and came into force in 1715. The Act, which was more formally called 'An act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters' contained this warning:
"Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King."
The punishments for ignoring the Act were severe - penal servitude for not less than three years, or imprisonment with hard labour for up to two years. Canada, Australia and the USA all took the UK's lead and established their own Riots Acts.
The Riot Act was last read to a group of demonstrating mill workers at Manchester Town Hall in 1842. Surprisingly, the it remained on the UK statute books into modern times and wasn't formally repealed until 1973. It was eventually superseded by the 1986 Public Order Act.
The first record of the figurative use of the phrase is in William Bradford's Letters, December 1819:
"She has just run out to read the riot act in the Nursery."
To 'run amok', which is sometimes spelled 'run amuck', is to behave in a wild or unruly manner.
Origin
'Run amok' is now synonymous with the term 'go crazy', but originally had a specific meaning. The term originated in Southeast Asia, where 'amok' (variously spelled amuk, amuck, amuco) meant 'a murderous frenzy or rage'. This derived from the state of mind of the Amuco - a class of 'death or glory' warriors who were employed in local power struggles in Java and Malaysia. Their belief was that fallen warriors became favourites of the gods, whereas failed missions were punished by dishonour and death. Unsurprisingly, the Amuco warriors had little to lose and their attacks were maniacal and frenzied. This is first alluded to in the 1516 text Barbosa, which was translated by Stanley, in 1866:
"There are some of them [the Javanese] who go out into the streets, and kill as many persons as they meet. These are called Amuco."
Captain James Cook, in his account of his travels in that part of the world - Voyages, 1772, gives an explicit definition of 'run amok':
"To run amock is to get drunk with opium... to sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage."
Ultima edición por Saskia el Dom Mar 25, 2007 3:47 pm; editado 1 vez
Dom Mar 04, 2007 10:23 pm
Saskia
Registrado: 15 Mar 2006
Mensajes: 1494
Cold shoulder
Meaning
A display of coldness or indifference, intended to wound.
Origin
The origin of this expression which is often repeated is that visitors to a house who were welcome were given a hot meal but those who weren't were offered only ' cold shoulder of mutton'. This is repeated in several etymological texts, including Hendrickson's usually reliable 'Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins'. There's no evidence to support this view though and it appears to be an example of folk etymology.
The first reference to the phrase in print is in Sir Walter Scott's 'The Antiquary', 1816:
"The Countess’s dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o’ the cauld shouther".
'Cauld' is Scottish dialect for 'cold'. Should you doubt that 'shouther' means 'shoulder', Scott goes on the use the word in other contexts which make the meaning clear. For example, "They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, ... they stood shouther to shouther".
Note that the shoulder is shown, not eaten - there's no reference to food here. Likewise, in a slightly later work of Scott's - St. Ronan's Well, 1824:
"I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally."
Scott coined several phrases, e.g. 'lock, stock and barrel'. The fact that the two earliest known citations of'cold shoulder' come from his writing would suggest he coined this too.
The phrase began appearing in print frequently after the 1820s and Dickens used it in 1840 in The Old Curiosity Shop. By that time it had migrated across the Atlantic and appears there in a 'letter to the editor' in the New England newspaper The Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, June 1839:
'... eminent individuals and his cabinet advisers turned "the cold shoulder" to their ambassador, for his independent act upon this occasion.'
Again, there's no connection here to food and the presence of quotation marks indicate that the phrase is being used allusively.
All in all, there is little reason to explain the derivation of 'cold shoulder' as anything other than a description of aloofness and disdain, and the source of it as Sir Walter Scott.
Ultima edición por Saskia el Dom Abr 29, 2007 1:19 pm; editado 1 vez
Dom Mar 25, 2007 3:46 pm
Saskia
Registrado: 15 Mar 2006
Mensajes: 1494
Wild goose chase
Meaning
A hopeless quest.
Origin
This phrase is old and appears to be one of the many phrases introduced to the language by Shakespeare. The first recorded citation is from Romeo and Juliet, 1592:
Romeo: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.
Mercutio: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.
Our current use of the phrase alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless - clearly wild geese are difficult to catch. Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare's day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A 'wild goose chase' was a chase in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation. The equine connection was referred to in another early citation, just ten years after Shakespeare - Nicholas Breton's The Mother's Blessing, 1602:
"Esteeme a horse, according to his pace, But loose no wagers on a wilde goose chase."
That meaning had been lost by the 19th century. In Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811, he defines the term much the way we do today:
"A tedious uncertain pursuit, like the following a flock of wild geese, who are remarkably shy."
The 1978 film 'The Wild Geese' alluded to the phrase in its title. The plot of the film involved a group of mercenaries embarking on a near-impossible mission. Of course, the near-impossible is no problem for action heroes and they caught their prey.
To help and encourage, usually in the commission of a crime or anti-social act.
Origin
'Aid and abet' is a common enough expression but, whilst 'aid' is well-known, what does 'abet' mean exactly? The word derives from the French 'abeter' - to hound, which itself derives from the Norse 'beita' - to cause to bite.
The phrase 'aid and abet' was coined in the late 18th century, by which time the term 'abet' had lost its original 'cause to bite' meaning. An early example of its use dates from 1798, when George Washington included it in a letter, first published in Writings, 1893. He didn't appear to have any better opinion of the French than that of the present US administration concerning the Gallic reluctance to aid and abet the war in Iraq:
"My mind is not a little agitated by the outrageous conduct of France towards the United States, and at the inimitable conduct of its partisans, who aid and abet their measures."
Bear baiting, or as it was first called 'bear abetting', was a popular entertainment in England between the 16th and 19th centuries. It took place in pits in 'bear gardens', in which tethered bears were torn to pieces by trained bulldogs. Such pits were commonplace and some still exist - for example the Bear Pit in Sheffield Botanical Gardens.
The 'sport' wasn't viewed with the distaste we now have for animal cruelty - Queen Elizabeth condoned the practice by attending baitings, one of which resulted in 13 dead bears. The Elizabethan writer Robert Laneham described the scene:
"It was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies approach... and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy."
So, if you plan to help someone, aid them by all means, but no biting please.
'Heavens to Murgatroyd' is American in origin and dates from the mid 20th century. The expression was popularized by the cartoon character Snagglepuss - a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960s, and is a variant of the earlier 'heavens to Betsy'.
The first use of the phrase wasn't by Snagglepuss but comes from the 1944 film Meet the People. It was spoken by Bert Lahr, best remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
Snagglepuss's voice was patterned on Lahr's, along with the 'heavens to Murgatroyd' line. Daws Butler's vocal portrayal of the character was so accurate that when the cartoon was used to promote Kellogg Cereals, Lahr sued and made the company distance him from the campaign by giving a prominent credit to Butler.
As with Betsy, we have no idea who Murgatroyd was. The various spellings of the name - as Murgatroid, Mergatroyd or Mergatroid tend to suggest that it wasn't an actual surname. While it is doubtful that the writers of Meet The People (Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy) were referring to an actual person, they must have got the name from somewhere.
No less than ten of the characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Ruddigore (1887) are baronets surnamed "Murgatroyd", eight of whom (or is that which?) are ghosts. Herzig and Saidy were well versed in the works of the musical theatre and that plethora of Murgatroyds would have been known to them.
Where then did the librettist Sir William Gilbert get the name? It seems that Murgatroyd has a long history as a family name in the English aristocracy. In his genealogy The Murgatroyds of Murgatroyd, Bill Murgatroyd states that, in 1371, a constable was appointed for the district of Warley in Yorkshire. He adopted the name of Johanus de Morgateroyde - literally John of Moor Gate Royde or 'the district leading to the moor'.
Whether the Murgatroyd name took that route from Yorkshire to Jellystone Park we can't be certain. Unless there's a Betsy Murgatroyd hiding in the archives, that's as close as we are likely to get to a derivation.
The Doldrums is the region of calm winds, centered slightly north of the equator and between the two belts of trade winds, which meet there and neutralize each other. It is widely assumed that the phrase 'in the doldrums' is derived from the name of this region. Actually, it's the other way about. In the 19th century, 'doldrum' was a word meaning 'dullard; a dull or sluggish fellow' and this probably derived from 'dol', meaning 'dull' with its form taken from 'tantrum'. That is, as a tantrum was a fit of petulance and passion, a doldrum was a fit of sloth and dullness, or one who indulged in such.
The term was used to mean 'a general state of low spirits' in the early 19th century. For example, this piece from The Morning Herald, April 1811:
"I am now in the doldrums; but when I get better, I will send [for] you."
In 1824, Lord Byron used the phrase in a nautical context in the verse tale The Island:
"From the bluff head where I watch'd to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."
[Note: baffling winds are those which are shifting and variable, making progress under sail impossible.]
'In the doldrums' came to refer specifically to sailing ships that were becalmed and unable to progress.
The region now called the 'The Doldrums' wasn't named until the mid 19th century and the naming came about as the result of a misapprehension. When reports of ships that were becalmed in that equatorial region described them as being 'in the doldrums', it was mistakenly thought that the reports were describing their location rather than their state. The earliest known reference to the region's name in print is Matthew Maury's The physical geography of the sea, 1855:
"The 'equatorial doldrums' is another of these calm places. Besides being a region of calms and baffling winds, it is a region noted for its rains."
Ultima edición por Saskia el Vie May 25, 2007 1:37 pm; editado 1 vez
Sab May 19, 2007 1:20 pm
Saskia
Registrado: 15 Mar 2006
Mensajes: 1494
By and large
By and large
Meaning
On the whole; generally speaking; all things considered.
Origin
Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases <http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nautical-phrases.html> , it originated in the days of sail.
To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there. When the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship's direction of travel then it is said to be 'large'. Sailors have used this term for centuries. For example, this piece from Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1591:
"When the wind came larger we waied anchor and set saile."
When the wind is in that favourable large direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit.
'By' is a rather more difficult concept for landlubbers like me. In simplified terms it means 'in the general direction of'. Sailors would say to be 'by the wind' is to face into the wind or within six compass points of it.
The earliest known reference to 'by and large' in print is from Samuel Sturmy, in The Mariners Magazine, 1669:
"Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge."
by and large<http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/windjammer.jpg> To sail 'by and large' required the ability to sail not only as earlier square-rigged ships could do, i.e. downwind, but also against the wind. At first sight, and for many non-sailors I'm sure second and third sight too, it seems impossible that a sailing ship could progress against the wind. They can though. The physics behind this is better left to others. Suffice it to say that it involves the use of triangular sails which act like aeroplane wings and provide a force which drags the ship sideways against the wind. By the use of this and by careful angling of the rudder the ship can be steered slightly into the wind.
The 19th century windjammers like Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress 'by and large' even in bad wind conditions by the use of many such aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.
Begin (again) from the beginning, embark on something without any preparation or advantage.
Origin
'Start from scratch' is an expression which has altered slightly in meaning since it was first coined. It is now usually used to mean 'start again from the beginning' - where an initial attempt has failed and a new attempt is made with nothing of value carried forward from the first attempt (as opposed to 'made from scratch' which means 'made from basic ingredients').
In the late 1800s, when 'start from scratch' began to be used it simply meant 'start with no advantage'. 'Scratch' has been used since the 18th century as a sporting term for a boundary or starting point which was scratched on the ground. The first such scratch was the crease which is a boundary line for batsmen in cricket.
John Nyren's Young Cricketer's Tutor, 1833 records this line from a 1778 work by Cotton:
"Ye strikers... Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright."
It is the world of boxing that has given us the concept of 'starting from scratch'. The scratched line there specified the positions of boxers who faced each other at the beginning of a bout. This is also the source of 'up to scratch', i.e. meet the required standard, as pugilists would have had to do when offering themselves for a match.
Scratch later came to be used as the name of any starting point for a race. The term came to be used in 'handicap' races where weaker entrants were given a head start. For example, in cycling those who were given no advantage had the handicap of 'starting from scratch', while others started ahead of the line. Other sports, notably golf, have taken up the figurative use of scratch as the term for 'with no advantage - starting from nothing'.
The Fort Wayne Gazette, April 1887, contains the earliest reference to 'starting from scratch' that I can find, in a report of a 'no-handicap' cycling race:
"It was no handicap. Every man was qualified to and did start from scratch."
