Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day. Harry Oliver
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case, such messy errors could well have led to the birth of the sardonic expression ‘That’s a fine kettle of fish’.
This is all very well, but it remains a bit of a mystery how our modern usage of the phrase developed. My guess is that to say ‘a different kettle of fish’ became a way of distinguishing between a messy thing and something less chaotic – after all, a ruined kettle of fish would have contrasted strongly with a perfect one.
Grocer
The grocer that we know today was originally a wholesaler, a grossier, selling the likes of tea, coffee, spices and dried fruits in bulk, or by the gross (meaning 144, from the French gros, big), to the vendor. The merchant who actually sold these goods to customers was known as a spicer. There is some confusion about when exactly the word ‘grocer’ took on its present meaning, but it may have been as early as the fourteenth century.
Hooch
A strong, illicitly distilled and distributed liquor, hooch is often also described as ‘bootleg’ (because bottles were hidden in boot legs) or ‘moonshine’ (because it was usually made at night). When the USA purchased Alaska in 1867 it made the sale of alcohol in the territory illegal. The local Tlingit Indians, living in a village called Hoochinoo, began making their own alcoholic drink. When the Alaskan gold rush started during the 1890s, the name was shortened to ‘hooch’, and it came to mean any poor-quality illegal alcoholic beverage. Incidentally, ‘hooch’ is the only Tlingit Indian word to make it into the English language.
Ice-cream Sundae
The dish of ice cream covered in chocolate began life in America, and a charming story lies behind it. The origin of this sweet treat dates back to 1881, when chocolate sauce was used to make ice-cream sodas at Ed Berners’ soda fountain in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. One day a man named George Hallauer asked him to put some of the chocolate sauce over a dish of ice cream. In a 1929 interview Berners said he’d been unsure if it was a good idea and protested. But Hallauer answered, ‘I’ll try anything once,’ and got his way. A new concoction was born, and it soon became very popular.
Berners started experimenting with different flavours and fancy names. He credits the term ‘Sunday’ to another ice-cream parlour in nearby Manitowoc. Seeing the popularity of the dish in Two Rivers, owner George Giffy began selling the ice creams with toppings – but only on Sundays. Everything changed when a ten-year-old girl insisted on having a bowl of ice cream ‘with that stuff on top’. It wasn’t a Sunday, so George told her she couldn’t have one. ‘This must be Sunday,’ replied the girl, ‘for it is the kind of ice cream I want!’ Giffy gave in and started selling the ice-cream treat every day, but called it a ‘Sunday’. The origin of the odd spelling is a little obscure, but the story goes that a glass salesman, when writing up an order for the canoe-shaped bowls in which Berners served his ice-cream Sunday, misspelled ‘Sunday’ as ‘Sundae’. Another theory is that the spelling was altered out of respect for Sunday’s religious significance.
Lager
Lager is light-coloured, fizzy beer, more correctly called ‘lager beer’. Literally, the word means a beer which is intended for storage, as lager is German for ‘a store’. It has been in use in English since the 1850s.
Lollipop
The origin of the lollipop is uncertain, but one theory points to the term ‘lolly’ being an eighteenth-century word used in the north of England to mean ‘mouth’. Accordingly, a lollipop was something that one ‘popped’ into the mouth. The term has been around since the mid-1700s, but originally it did not necessarily mean a hard candy mounted on a stick. The stick popped up at the turn of the twentieth century.
Tumbler
A tumbler is a short drinks glass, and all modern tumblers are designed so that they can be placed on a surface without tumbling over, which begs the question: why ‘tumbler’? The answer is simple: in the seventeenth century the original glasses known as tumblers had bases that were either rounded or pointed. Naturally this made it impossible to put them down without ‘tumbling’ them. Some sources suggest that it was the glass-making practices of the day that prevented the glass bottoms from being flat, but this is untrue, as other perfectly functional styles of glass already existed. The truth is that the glassed were made purposely so that drinkers had to finish their drinks before setting down the glass – with obvious benefit to booze-vendors of the era.
Welsh Rabbit/Rarebit
If you order this in a restaurant expecting to have a bunny from Wales cooked to perfection and brought to your table, you will be sorely disappointed. For Welsh Rabbit, or Rarebit, has nothing to do with the twitchy-nosed little beasts – it is no more than cheese on toast with mustard. The term has been in use since the eighteenth century, and is said to have been invented as a dig at the Welsh. Back then Wales was very poor, with most people unable to afford a nice piece of meat for their evening meal. Cheese was seen by the poor as the best meat substitute for meat. Joke against the Welsh or not, Welsh Rabbit is a tasty snack and you don’t have to shoot it before you cook it.
Whole Shebang
Meaning everything, or the lot, ‘the whole shebang’ is a curious phrase. The problem with tracing its origin is that nobody seems to have a clue what a shebang is. Some postulate that it comes from shebeen, an Irish word for an unlicenced drinking den, or speakeasy. The vaguely humorous notion that the phrase was borne out of a drunken Irishman’s tendency to try to take on ‘the whole shebang’ – i.e. everyone enjoying an illegal drink in the bar – has little to support it. Mark Twain first used the word in print in 1869, but, like other phrases that begin with ‘the whole’ (‘box of dice’, ‘enchilada’, ‘nine yards’), it seems the object is only there to make a catchy phrase, and this only works if we divorce its literal meaning from its metaphorical one.
MILITARY
Big Shot
Used to refer to a particularly important person, this twentieth-century phrase developed out of the previous century’s ‘big gun’, which meant the same thing. A shot is a missile for a cannon or gun, and rather obviously a ‘big shot’, like an important person, is going to be more powerful than lesser weapons.
Braille
In 1829 Louis Braille, a blind French musician, refined this method of communication and arrived at the reading and writing system for the blind that we know today. Braille originates from an earlier, more primitive system which was actually designed to facilitate night writing by Napoleon’s army. The raised bumps on the paper could be interpreted in the dark without need for a light and so exposure of the soldier to enemy snipers was avoided.
Fifth Column
A fifth column is a clandestine group of subversive agents working to undermine a larger group, particularly a nation. The phrase was coined in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), by the Nationalist General Emilio Mola. When he was leading four army columns against Madrid he described, in a radio address, his ‘fifth column’ within the city, composed of sympathisers intent on overthrowing the Republicans from within. Various conflicts since then have seen the expression used again, including the Second World War and the Gulf War.
Go Off Half-cocked
When