Red Herrings & White Elephants - The Origins of the Phrases We Use Every Day. Albert Jack
The phrase used in such circumstances is ‘taken aback’.
To Have Someone Over A Barrel means that somebody is totally at the mercy of third parties and unable to have any influence over the circumstances surrounding them. In medieval Britain it was standard practice to drape a drowning, or drowned, person face down over a large barrel to try and clear their lungs. As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate. Not really an ideal situation to be in for many reasons – especially in the Navy.
The Bitter End is the absolute end. This phrase has its origins at sea and is nothing to do with taste. On the sailing ships of past centuries, the anchor was fixed to the deck by solid bollards made of iron and wood known as ‘bitts’. Coloured rags were tied to the rope near the deck end and once they were revealed crewmates knew the anchor could not be let out much further. The rope between the anchor and rag was known as the bitt end or the bitter end. To be at the ‘bitter end’ meant there was no rope left and the water was too deep to set the anchor.
If something Goes By The Board it means it is cast aside, lost in the events. On the old wooden tall ships the ‘board’ was the side of the boat. Anything falling off a ship and lost forever was regarded as gone past the board, or ‘by the board’. By And Large is a phrase we use as a substitute for ‘broadly speaking’ or dealing with a subject in general terms rather than in a detailed way. The phrase is a nautical one and dates back to day when ships relied on the wind in their sails. Sailing ‘by’ means to steer a ship very close to the line of the wind, and sailing ‘large’ means the wind is on the quarter. This technique made it easier for helmsmen to keep a ship on course during changing winds and in difficult conditions but not in a particularly accurate way, just generally in the right direction. Large ships were assessed on their ability to sail ‘by and large’. The phrase was a standard part of the nautical language by 1669 and in wider use by the turn of the following century.
When you have Had Your Chips your luck has run out and you are close to failing altogether. Often this is thought to relate to gambling casinos and the gaming chips they use as stake money. This certainly does ring true and can illustrate a situation where a desperate gambler, trying to win back his losses, could be told, ‘You have had all your chips now.’ But there is an earlier suggestion. An old naval story indicates workers in a dockyard were allowed to take home off-cuts of timber, known as chips, as a perk of the job. It was not uncommon for some men to fall out of favour with the foreman, perhaps for trying to take too many, and to have this privilege removed. In which cases they were told they had ‘had all their chips’.
To Cut And Run describes pulling rapidly out of a difficult situation and escaping without disadvantage. The phrase was first recorded in 1704 and has a nautical meaning. Hauling a heavy anchor was a difficult task and took many men a considerable time to both free it and raise it back into the sling. Ships coming under attack from the shoreline could suffer considerable damage before the anchor could be dislodged and raised, so it became standard practice to chop the hemp anchor line with an axe and to allow the ship to ‘run on the wind’. By 1861 the phrase to ‘cut and run’ was a standard naval expression.
Dead In The Water means an idea or scheme has no momentum and no chance of success. This is a nautical expression, dating back to the days of the sailing ships. On a windless day, with nothing to propel the vessel, a boat sitting motionless in the sea was known as ‘dead in the water’, going nowhere.
To be At A Loose End describes a time when we would normally be sitting around with nothing to do. We go back to the old tall ships to define this phrase. Any ship using sails would have thousands of ropes making up the rigging. Each of these lengths would need to be bound tight at both ends to prevent them from unravelling, which would be disastrous during a storm. When the ship’s captain found seamen sitting around with nothing to do, he would usually assign them mundane labour such as checking the rigging for loose ends, and re-binding them. Therefore, idle men would find usually themselves ‘at a loose end’.
On The Fiddle has nothing at all to do with the previous saying. Instead it implies someone is involved in something not entirely within the rules, and perhaps gaining more than they should be. This is a nautical saying and associated directly with the square ship plate (see Square Meal). Those square plates had a raised rim (as did the tables), which prevented food falling off in high seas and these rims were called ‘fiddles’. Crew would become suspicious of a fellow sailor with so much food it piled against the rims and they became known as ‘on the fiddle’ (taking or being given more than they should).
First Rate means something is the best available, near perfect or as good as you can get. From the time Henry VIII began organising the English Navy in the 16th century, war ships were rated on a scale of one to six (a grading that lasted more than 300 years). Then, as now, size mattered and the smallest ships were given a sixth rating, while the largest and best armed were regarded as first rate. Therefore, the best ships to command or crew were known as the ‘first rate’ vessels, a term that became synonymous with the best of anything.
To Flog A Dead Horse is to waste time and energy on a situation that will clearly have a negative outcome. Far out to sea, the Horse Latitudes can be found 30 degrees either side of the Equator, where the subsiding dry air and high pressure results in weak winds. According to naval legend, the area was so called because the tall sail ships, relying on strong winds, always slowed considerably or even stalled altogether. Often it took months to pass through the Horse Latitudes, by which time sailors had worked off what was known as the ‘Dead Horse’ – the advance wages they had received when signing on. As seamen were paid by the day, the slow passage was to their benefit and there was no incentive to expend much effort in the Horse Latitudes as they worked off their advance wages. Therefore this period of months in the painfully slow mid-ocean became known as ‘flogging the dead horse’.
When somebody Passes With Flying Colours they have achieved something with distinction, or been successful in a difficult task. The earliest known reference dates back to 1706 and the English Navy, whose term for flag was ‘colours’. Victorious and sailing back into London, fleets would demonstrate their success at battle by keeping the battle flags high on the mast and word would soon spread that the Navy had passed by ‘with its colours flying’, a sure sign of victory.
To feel Groggy means to feel generally run down and unwell, often as the result of drinking too much. In 1740 Admiral Vernon, the commander in chief of the West Indies, replaced the neat rum which was then issued to all sailors twice daily, with a watered-down version. The Admiral was a well-known figure and had the nickname ‘Old Grog’ because of his trademark Grogam coat (a rough mixture of mohair and silk). Thomas Trotter, a sailor on board the Berwick, wrote the following passage in 1781:
A mighty bowl on deck he drew
And filled it to the brink
Such drank the Burford’s gallant crew
And such the gods shall drink
The sacred robe which Vernon wore
Was drenched within the same
And hence his virtues guard our shore
And Grog drives its name
According to The Guardian’s Notes & Queries, Series I, the unhappy sailors of the fleet soon began calling the new watered-down ration ‘Grog’ and as a natural progression drunk sailors were considered ‘groggy’.
Making money Hand Over Fist alludes to the practice of making steady financial gain, and usually pretty quickly. Back in the 18th century the term was originally ‘hand over hand’ and was a nautical term meaning ‘to make fast and steady progress up a rope’. Later modified to ‘hand over fist’, alluding to a flat hand passing over the fist gripping the rope, the phrase widened to describe any steady progress in the forward direction, never backwards, such as a boat race. By the late 19th century the financial markets,