Last week, I was feeling tired and told Michelle I was going to hit the hay. Then I stopped in my tracks. “Why do we say that?” I asked. “Horses and cows eat hay but sleep on straw. Shouldn’t it be, ‘I’m going to hit the straw’?”
But it’s not. And that’s because mattresses used to be stuffed with hay, which would be murder on those of us with allergies! This phrase has been in use since the 19th century but wasn’t widely used until early in the 20th century. We also say “Hit the sack” because of the same reason; mattresses were sacks stuffed with the hay.
So why don’t we change it? There can’t be many mattresses stuffed with hay anymore. Of course, there are likely not many stuffed with straw either. But changing what we say is no easy matter.
Recently, Elon Musk, the billionaire who purchased the social media platform Twitter for more money that could be stacked in $100 bills in my house, decided he wanted to change things there. He rebranded the enterprise as X. He doesn’t want us tweeting anymore. Maybe we’re X-ing? That would feel off since that’s slang for crossing, as in a street.
No matter what the mercurial man lands on, it’s likely to be some time before people stop saying that they are using Twitter or that they sent a tweet. We don’t like change, and our brains like to work in the easiest possible fashion when it comes to recalling how to say something.
“Hit the hay” is an idiom, a saying for which the meaning can’t be figured out by the meanings of the individual words, but rather by an understanding of a different usage. If you were new to English and saw that phrase, you would likely think that someone was punching a pile of hay for some strange reason. English is fun!
Have you ever beaten around the bush? Of course you have, as have we all. That means you don’t get to the point right away. This phrase originated in the 15th century when someone was flushing out the game they were hunting. In the 17th century, it started to be used as we do today. If you’re a hunter, you might also understand the idea of barking up the wrong tree, a 19th century American expression when a hunting dog was in the wrong location for the scent. We use it to say you’re on the wrong track today.
I thought I had the idiom “bite the bullet” figured out. Since we use it to prepare for an unpleasant situation that we just need to get through, I thought it might have to do with battlefield surgery, where a soldier might bite a bullet to distract from the pain he would soon face. But looking on the Idiom Origins website, I found that was not the case; most soldiers would bite on a leather strap or a piece of wood.
Instead, I discovered a soldier would keep the muskat ball in his mouth while putting the other elements in his gun and then ram everything in place. If you can picture the soldiers during the Revolutionary War, who reloaded their guns between every shot, this is what happened.
But biting off more than you can chew has nothing to do with biting the bullet. We know it means we take on more than we can handle. This comes to us from those who would chew tobacco in the 19th century and quite literally did that. Yuck!
Did you ever tell someone to break a leg? I hope you didn’t mean that in the most literal sense, but rather were talking to someone before a big performance, either musically or theatrically. There is a legend that this comes from John Wilkes Booth breaking his leg after assassinating Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater and then jumping down from the balcony. That seems silly and is more likely based on a theatrical superstition that it’s bad luck to wish someone good luck.
I looked up “The whole nine yards.” As a football fan, this didn’t make much sense since you need ten yards to get a first down! We know the idiom means to get everything you need, but where does it come from? The answer: Nobody knows! They call it the Holy Grail of etymology since nobody can prove through documentation when and where this started to be used, though it’s really been within the last 100 years.
We could sure use some rain. In fact, most wouldn’t mind if it rained cats and dogs! But why would someone use animals to describe a great deal of rain? This was first seen in the 1600s, though it was “raining dogs and polecats.” The likely origin is that people would often find drowned cats and dogs after heavy storms. A sad beginning to something witty!
When I decided on this topic, I threw caution to the wind since I had no idea where I was going, but still said the heck with it, let’s go! This comes from the 19th century and refers to throwing something away since the wind will carry it off.
This has been more fun than a barrel of monkeys! (One more, since monkeys have long been looked on as being fun!) I invite you to look up other idioms and find out just how unique and playful our language can be!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is benignant, which means kind and gracious, as in, “When the benignant man told me to hang in there, I knew immediately that the idiom meant to stay strong through a tough time.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!