by Max Cryer
In 1935, when Ford Madox Ford wrote of “the establishment,” he was referring to the literary elite.The term had moved closer to meaning the governing classes when historian A.J.P. Taylor reviewed William Corbett’s biography in the New Statesman in 1953 and used the term (with an uppercase E), but without actually defining it.
But in 1955, the British government was in some confusion about the high-profile spies who had defected from Britain to Russia. In September of that year, journalist Henry Fairlie in the Spectator retained the uppercase initial, and redefined the term in a sense that rapidly became commonplace. Fairlie wrote:
By the “Establishment,” I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.
This was perceived to mean those individuals and organizations with a strong interest in maintaining the status quo, and the clout to do so—the ruling elites, generally perceived to be a combination of the financial sector, the Church, the civil service, the Crown, and the military.
The term also came to be used in a narrower context, for instance when a person seeking advancement within a political party could be said to require the approval of the Establishment within just that group.
Eureka!
In essence, “heureka” is the first person singular of the Greek word heuriskein—to find—and thus means “I have found.” Its most famous utterance is attributed to the Sicilian mathematician Archimedes, who invented various military devices, and also the water screw.
Legend tells that around 270 BC King Hieron of Syracuse delivered some pure gold to a goldsmith in order to have a new crown made. When it was finished, the king suspected the gold in his new crown had been corrupted with other metal, the craftsman having kept the leftover gold for himself. The king asked Archimedes to test it. This posed a problem—Archimedes didn’t know how to do that.
Both the crown and the original supply of gold were the same weight. But one day, stepping into his (full) bath, Archimedes noted that a quantity of water spilled over the edge. It dawned on him that the volume of water that overflowed would be equal to the volume of his body; therefore, the bulk of an object could be measured by the amount of fluid it displaced. Shrieking “Eureka”and jumping from the bath, Archimedes supposedly ran naked through the streets, hastening to test how much water would be displaced by the king’s crown.
Archimedes knew that a portion of gold weighed more than portions of other metals of the same size. So, all he had to do was place the crown in water, measure how much water it displaced, and then find a piece of gold which displaced exactly the same amount of water. When he compared the weights, if both were pure gold they should both weigh the same.
But they didn’t. The crown turned out to be lighter in gold than it should have been. History does not relate what happened to the goldsmith, but Archimedes and his cry of Eureka! have been part of folklore for more than 2,000 years.
With its connotation of discovering gold, the word Eureka was incorporated into the Great Seal of the State of California in 1849 and became the State’s official motto in 1963.
Everybody’s doing it
The genesis can be traced to a Mozart opera of 1790, commissioned by Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire and said to be based on a much gossiped about real-life incident in Vienna.
Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte entitled the story Cost Fan Tutte—which translates as “Everybody’s doing it” (though purists will point out that “tutte”can be seen as the feminine of “tutti,” and thus only women are “doing it”).
In 1912, Irving Berlin brought the term into everyday English (with any doubt about gender removed). Everybody’s Doing It, published in 1912, meant that everybody was doing the dance called the Turkey Trot.
Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it
An abbreviated form of the original statement in the Hartford Courant newspaper in 1897: “A well-known American writer said once that while everybody talked about the weather nobody seemed to do anything about it.”
It has been assumed that the American writer referred to was Mark Twain, but there is no evidence that Twain ever said it or wrote it. The favored candidate is Charles Dudley Warner, the then editor of the Hartford Courant and a friend of Mark Twain’s, who may have been reporting something Twain said.
Whatever its ancestry, a version of the expression emerged as the name of a song (“Everyone Complains about the Weather”) in the 1953 movie (and 1961 theater musical) Calamity Jane.
Every man has his price
Recording the History and Proceedings of the House of Commons (1734), Sir William Wyndham wrote that, “It is an old maxim that every man has his price—if you can but come up to it.”
But alas, it was when the term was used by the more famous Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford (whom Wyndham disliked) that it went into the vernacular. Walpole had been Prime Minister of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury. In 1798, historian William Coxe published Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, in which he quoted a statement of Walpole’s that, although it was a repeated version of Wyndham’s, became the basis for common usage in English.
Regarding the declarations of men whose patriotism he questioned, Walpole said:
All those men have their price.
Walpole had been referring to a specific group, rather than mankind in general. But when the remark went into general usage, its meaning was distorted by the word “those” customarily being left out.
The abbreviated version became even more firmly entrenched with the publication of a play in 1869 written by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a three act comedy in rhyme called Walpole—or Every Man Has His Price. By that time (and thereafter),Walpole was credited with the remark, despite it having been “an old maxim” he had employed in reference to a particular group of people.
Extraterrestrial
In its meaning of something from outside or beyond the earth, the word extraterrestrial was first used by H.G. Wells in his 1898 novel War of the Worlds. The narrator tells of arriving at a pit where a mysterious cylinder has fallen to earth and a small crowd has gathered. The narrator is convinced that “ . . . the Thing had come from the planet Mars,” and reports:
... the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. “Extra-terrestrial” had no meaning for most of the onlookers.
(The later abbreviation of extraterrestrial to E.T. is credited to L. Sprague de Camp in 1939.)
Fall on your feet
The first known use of the expression comes from Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers (1857):
It is well known that the family of the Slopes never starve: they always fall on their feet, like cats.
(The) family that prays together stays together
Irish-born Patrick Peyton was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the United States in 1941. At that time of trouble, Father Peyton developed a strong belief in the power of rosary prayers. In 1942, he initiated a Family Rosary Crusade to promote the praying of the rosary by families as a move towards encouraging stronger faith. The crusade became widespread, aided by modern technology—Father Peyton was one of the earliest evangelists to make use of the mass media.
In 1947, Al Scalpone, a young advertising executive, came forward and offered to help. An experienced writer of advertising copy, his initial contribution to the crusade was the slogan:
The family that prays together, stays together.
This added greatly to the success of Peyton’s crusade, which gathered wide support throughout Catholic America and then internationally.
Scalpone eventually became Vice-President of CBS-TV, and his slogan went into common usage (although sometimes with variations its author may not have expected).
Famous for being famous
While fame is
sometimes a tribute to the worthy and the honorable, sometimes it is not. “Famous for being famous” has become a pejorative expression describing someone with no discernible talent or quality, but who becomes the focus of consistent publicity.
The term originated from an assessment written by eminent American sociologist, historian, and Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Boorstin, whose 1961 book The Image—a Guide to Pseudo Events contained the lines:
A celebrity is a person known for his well-knownness. Celebrities intensify their celebrity images simply by being well-known for relations among themselves. By a kind of symbiosis, celebrities live off each other.
Over time, popular usage condensed the concept into “famous for being famous.”
Boorstin had little sympathy for those celebrities he saw as “counterfeit people” who had little connection with reality. And with impressive foresight he scorned events that would be staged and scripted as a “counterfeit version of actual happenings,” although by 1961 the entertainment industry had yet to invent “reality” television shows.
(Another epigram attributed to Boorstin: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.”)
Famous for fifteen minutes
In 1968, Andy Warhol wrote a catalogue for an exhibition of his work in Stockholm, and included the sentence:
In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.
Various paraphrases developed by media have been at variance with the original, e.g.,“In the future fifteen people will be famous” and “In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.” Sometimes the variations came from Warhol himself, apparently tired of being queried about the 1968 original (in 1979 he said that his 1968 prediction had come true—everyone was famous for fifteen minutes).
In usage, Warhol’s original sentence has been shortened to “Famous for fifteen minutes.” The term is customarily used, rather scathingly, in the sense that Warhol intended—that the attention some personalities or incidents attract is fleeting.
Condensed to “They’ve had their fifteen minutes,” the expression is immediately understood as a put-down—someone’s time in the sun has now become time in the shade.
(In recent times the original Warhol statement has started to show signs of moving with the times, becoming “Fifteen megabytes of fame.”)
Far from the madding crowd
This started life in William Drummond’s sonnet “Dear Wood” (1614):
Far from the madding worldling’s hoarse discords.
Perhaps the word worldling seemed a little clumsy to Thomas Gray, whose “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” (1751) produced an echo of William Drummond’s line with:
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife . . .
The term was later taken up by Thomas Hardy as the title of a novel (often misquoted as “ ... the maddening crowd”). The archaiac word “madding” means “frenzied.”
Fast and loose
Old-time fairs featured a test of skill called “Fast and Loose,” in which a displayed rope appeared to be tied up in a complex series of knots and loops. A punter would attempt to thread a stick through a group of loops in such a way that the stick would remain in place.
But cunning knotting by the proprietor often ensured that wherever the stick was placed it could not remain firm. Hence the name of the game became a synonym for something being treated with rather too broad a view of what is honest and reliable.
In 1557, Richard Tottel put the term into print in his Songs and Sonnets, telling of:
. . . a new maried studient that plaied fast or loose.
Fasten your seat-belts—it’s going to be a bumpy night
A memorable and oft-repeated line written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and spoken by Bette Davis playing the fading star, actress Margot Channing, in the 1950 movie All About Eve.
The line is often misquoted as “bumpy ride,” but Margot Channing said it at an evening occasion when she knew there were going to be ructions later that night.
Fate worse than death
Referring to the rape of both married and unmarried women in ancient Rome during the sackings of Rome by Goths and Huns, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781) declared that:
The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself.
This could be seen as the precursor to various other versions of the expression that surfaced several times over the following century, albeit with minor variations in the wording. But by the time Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes (1914) it had settled into its current form. A disgruntled ape at odds with his tribe captures Jane Porter, throws her across his shoulders and carries her back into the jungle to “a fate a thousand times worse than death.”
She is of course rescued by Tarzan.
Fellow traveler
Literally, it just means a companion on your travels. But in 1924, Leon Trotsky’s book Literature and Revolution picked up a Russian word that had been in informal use since 1917—popútchik.
Its meaning in this context had to do with people who sympathized with the policies of a political group, without actually being formal members. Popútchik can be translated as “walk part of the way,” so when Trotsky’s writings were circulated in English, the term “fellow traveler” took on a new significance—describing non-Communists who nevertheless were inclined to agree with some Communist principles.
(The) female of the species is more deadly than the male
From Rudyard Kipling (1911):
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Few and far between
Often heard in weather reports as an adjunct to, or substitute for “scattered showers.” But originally the line had nothing to do with intermittent rain or sunny patches—it concerned contact with heavenly hosts.
The original idea may have come from Robert Blair’s 1743 poem “The Grave”:
“ . . . visits, like those of angels, short and far between.”
But the form we and the weather presenters are familiar with comes from the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, who wrote in 1840:
What though my winged hours of bliss have been
Like angel visits, few and far between.
(Campbell also created another phrase that later became widely used: “Distance lends enchantment.”)
First catch your hare
Commonly misattributed to either one of two famous cooks— Isabella Beeton or Hannah Glasse.The latter came closer, in The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy (1746), where her instructions for making hare soup began: “Take your hare when it is cased (meaning ‘skinned’).”
A century later William Makepeace Thackeray gave us the line, in Rose and Ring (1855), but it had nothing to do with cooking: rebel troops, determined on usurping a Prince, track him to a tavern and demand his sword. The Prince—who clearly had misheard Hannah Glasse—announces:
First catch your hare. Ha!
First Lady
When the United States became independent of British rule, British titles and honorifics were abandoned as well and the Americans began to establish their own honorifics, e.g., Representative, Congress Person, Oscar Nominee, Senator, Colonel (attached to men who had never been in an army, e.g., Harlan Sanders and Andreas van Kuijk, aka Tom Parker)—and Mr. President. But despite the logicality of “Mr. President,” there was some uncertainty about how his consort should be described.
Mrs. President was tried, and Presidentess, but neither seemed particularly graceful. Then in 1849, during the tenure of the twelfth President Zachary Taylor, Dolley Madison, the popular wife and widow of the fourth President, died. In his speech at Dolley Madison’s funeral, Taylor is reputed to have said:
S
he will never be forgotten because she was truly our first lady for a half-century.
The term First Lady has been in use ever since.
Fish and visitors go off in three days
The elegantly artificial prose style of sixteenth-century writer John Lyly made him famous at the time. His best-known work Euphues—the Anatomy of Wit is commemorated today in the English word euphemism—a gentler way of referring to something considered unpalatable.
But in 1579 Lyly abandoned the softly-softly approach, when he wrote bluntly:
Fish and guests in three days are stale.
Benjamin Franklin’s adaptation “Fish and visitors stink in three days” came in 1733.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
Associated with, and widely used by, boxer Muhammad Ali, the line was created for him by his assistant trainer and long-time companion Drew “Bundini” Brown. When Brown’s adult son Drew Brown III set out to be a speaker on the subject of motivation, Muhammad Ali wrote in a testimonial for him:
Motivation is in Drew Brown’s blood. His father Drew “Bundini” Brown motivated me to become one of the greatest boxers of all time. Drew Brown speeches are doing the same for both young and old. His timely message is exactly what is needed in today’s ever-changing society. His dad’s slogan of “Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee,” motivated me to be a champion.
