HOUSEHOLD SAYINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1938, Page 10

HOUSEHOLD SAYINGS

SOME OF THEIR ORIGINS THE FIRST LITTLE BIRD Every day we use stock phrases, the origins or literal meanings of which we do not know says a writer in the “Adelaide Chronicle.” Until I visited Portsmouth and went over Nelson’s flagship the Victory, I had supposed that the phrase “not enough room to swing a cat” referred to a feline animal. I learned different. The guide took a party of us below, and after explaining details of navy life in the early nineteenth century, he picked up a vicious-looking cat-o’-nine-tails. “Offenders,” he explained, “were flogged in full view of the ship’s company on the upper decks. As you can see there is little room here —not enough room to swing a ‘cat.’ That is the origin of the phrase.” At Canterbury, I was shown round St Martin’s the oldest church in Great Britain. Alongside one wall is an ancient stone seat. On this, I was told, the aged and infirm could sit during the service; the others knelt when they were not standing:—“The weakest go to the wall.” How many who say, “A little bird told me,” know that the saying comes from a Biblical verse, “Curse not the rich in thy bedchamber for a bird of the air shall carry the voice.” And the phrase, “Got the bird” —used in a theatrical sense or to imply that one has received his or her conge from a lover —is far from modern. It goes back several centuries, and was really "Got the big bird”' —that is, the goose, meaning that an actor was hissed by the audience. The United States is wrongly given the credit or blame for the saying. When a person is “hauled over the coals” it recalls a medieval torture, the’ victim being slowly drawn over a coal fire and given a literal roasting. Why does “sent to Coventry" describe ostracising someone who is out of favour with his or her fellows It is said that the citizens of that English city at one time had a great dislike for soldiers, and refused to speak to them. Hence when a soldier was sent Coventry he was cut off from social intercourse. ' Few people who confess that they are “hard up” realise that the phrase is a nautical one. When a vessel was hard put to it by stress of weather the order, “Hard up the helm,” was given and the tiller was put up as far as possible to the windward so as to turn the ship’s head away from the wind. So a man who is “hard up” has to weather the financial storm as best he can. “Pin money,” a woman’s allowance for her personal expenses, once meant money spent mainly on pins—in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they were expensive. The literal meaning is gone, but the phrase remains. “Draw it mild” (do not exaggerate) once referring to drawing beer, and the saying arises from the suggestion, “do not draw it with too strong a flavour.” Better known, perhaps is the origin of the phrase “caught a Tartar.” It is related that an Irish soldier during a battle against the Turks called out to a comrade, “I have caught a Tartar,” his friend said, “Bring him along,” but Paddy gasped, “He won’t come.” Then come along yourself,” said the other, to which the Irishman cried, “I’m trying to, but he won’t let me.” When a person has a selfish motive in the background he “has an axe to grind”—a saying derived from a story told by Franklin. A man wanted to grind an axe, but had not one to turn the grindstone. Fie asked young Franklin how the machine worked and kept praising the boy as he turned it until the axe was ground. He praise was not sincere, because he had an axe to grind. The slang phrase, “kicked the bucket” for died is said to have arisen because a suicide would kick away the bucket on which he stood with a rope round his neck. “A flash in the pan” comes from an attempt to discharge a gun ending in a flash in the lock-pan. A “feather in his cap” is derived from the custom in Asia and among the American Indians of adding a feather in the headgear for every enemy slain.