Common Phrases

by Max Cryer

  Guinea pigs

  Despite the name, Guinea pigs come from South America, not Guinea. But it is true that from the mid-1800s guinea pigs were used for medical experiments because their immune systems and their inability to synthesize Vitamin C mirror the human condition.

  In contemporary times we accept the term guinea pig as a metaphor for experimental treatments performed on humans rather than little animals.

  The University of Texas Health Science Center survey of Twentieth Century Milestones in Clinical Research records that in 1913 George Bernard Shaw was the first person to refer to human research subjects as “guinea pigs.”

  Halcyon days

  The term is used in Aristophanes’ The Birds (414 BC), meaning a calm and stress-free period, so its significance was recognized by the public at that time. But it was the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid (43 BC to AD 17 or 18), who told the whole story in his Metamorphoses.

  In Greek mythology, the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds, was Alcyon (the “h” was added later), and she married a mortal man. The couple angered Zeus, who threw a thunderbolt at a ship in which the husband was sailing and he drowned.

  Distraught, Alcyon threw herself into the sea to end her life. Zeus, however, in a fit of pity, turned them both into shining kingfisher birds which could skim along the water and make their nests on the sea’s surface. The birds were named after Alcyon (and still are). Alcyon produced kingfisher eggs, and because her father was god of the winds he calmed the seas so she could safely hatch her chicks. This gave rise to a legend that told of the seas staying calm for fourteen days a year so the two birds could safely breed.

  Ovid wrote:

  Sev’n days sits brooding on her floating nest:

  A wintry queen: her sire at length is kind,

  Calms ev’ry storm, and hushes ev’ry wind.

  Arthur Golding translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses into English in 1567, in time for Shakespeare to include the phrase in Henry VI, Part I (c. 1599), as spoken by Joan La Pucelle.

  The expression has remained in English consistently, although its origin has a curious flaw: kingfishers do not float their nests on the sea—they nest in holes they have burrowed into banks.

  Happy ever after

  This traditional ending to many stories, usually after trials and tribulations have been suffered, owes its ancestry to William Makepeace Thackeray. He first used the phrase privately in a letter to his fiancée Isabella in 1834, then appeared to take a liking to it, using it publicly several times afterward in his literary output. An early example can be found in History of Pendennis (1850):

  And we will send the money to Pen, who can pay all his debts without hurting anybody and then we will live happy ever after.

  With a subtle change from adjective to adverb, Thackeray’s vision of a blissful future eventually became a cliché and a subject of satire.

  Have a nice day

  It was far from being the irritating ploy it later became when Kirk Douglas said the line for the first time publicly in the 1948 movie A Letter to Three Wives based on a novel by John Klempner.

  A variation occurred five years later in 1953 when the Californian advertising agency Carson/Rogers designed a sketched caricature smile accompanied by the slogan “Have a Happy Day,” then extended the slogan to their switchboard. Operators were instructed to answer calls “Carson/Rogers—have a happy day!” But only until noon; the theory was that if callers weren’t having a happy day by noon, the joyous greetings weren’t going to help it happen. Carson/Rogers dispersed the slogan on letterheads, towels and tie pins.

  Over the next twenty years “happy day” morphed back into the 1948 original “nice day,” and gradually crept into the daily vocabulary of people in service occupations, such as supermarket checkout staff, often repeated in an uncaring monotone.

  One punter, objecting to the formula, would snap back defiantly, “I won’t.”

  Head over heels

  It started out as “Per caputque pedesque” around 60 BC, when Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus in his poem Carmina told of someone that he would like to see go “over head and heels” into mud. Usage over several centuries rearranged the words slightly but retained the image.

  The expression came into English the same way, but had become inverted by 1771 when Herbert Lawrence in The Contemplative Man wrote about someone receiving:

  Such a violent involuntary kick in the Face,

  as drove him Head over Heels.

  Hear no evil, see no evil

  It’s doubtful that anyone ever said it in English before the end of the seventeenth century. The concept of “See not evil, hear not evil, speak not evil” related back as far as Confucius in China, several hundred years BC, and then traveled to Japan, where it was known for centuries as a moral maxim. By a trick of the Japanese language, the maxim eventually became known worldwide. “Kikazaru, Iwazaru, Mizaru” actually means “See not evil, hear not evil, speak not evil,” but the Japanese suffix for “not” (zaru) sounds very much like the Japanese word for monkey (saru). So, gradually, an association grew between avoiding the proscribed evils, and monkeys.

  A stone carving of three monkeys appeared in Japan during the sixteenth century. But it was one hundred years later that the most famous visual image appeared—showing monkeys not seeing, hearing or speaking.

  The spectacular Toshogu Shrine near the town of Nikko took 15,000 craftsmen over two years to build and then decorate with two million sheets of gold leaf. Its elaborate stable for the emperor’s sacred horse features wall designs by the celebrated carver Hidari Jingogo in 1636, including his famous depiction of three monkeys who avoid evil by not seeing it, speaking it or hearing it.

  The popularity of the three wise monkeys quickly spread. By the end of the nineteenth century they had become an established image in Western decor.An international hobby group estimates that they have been created in over 20,000 different versions as ornaments, and in every conceivable substance.

  Miniatures are made in gold and set with jewels; they can be shelf-size in brass; or right up to life-size wise monkeys made of concrete for garden decoration. They can be found in porcelain, alabaster, plaster of paris, wood, bronze, nickel, and pewter. They adorn door knockers, cigarette boxes, bookends, paperweights, wine bottles, and toasting forks. The three wise monkeys are everywhere.

  Here comes the bride

  The attractive bridal chorus melody from Lohengrin (1850) is probably the most widely recognized of all Wagner’s music. But it was not the composer’s intention that it be associated with a bride’s arrival at her wedding. In the opera, the chorus is sung after the wedding. It has nothing to do with the religious ritual of marriage, but rather its physical consummation: the ladies-in-waiting sing the chorus as they lead the now-married bride to the honeymoon suite, where her new husband awaits her.

  Their words (“Treulich geführt ziehet dahin, wo euch der Segen der Liebe bewahr”) hint at joys to come.

  The music stayed safely within its opera until Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria married a Prussian prince in 1858. She used the Wagner music (instrumental only) during the ceremony, initiating a trend that spread through the entire English-speaking world and still survives.

  In 1881 the New York-published Franklin Square Song Collection presented a version of English words:

  Guided by us, thrice happy pair

  Enter this doorway, ’tis love that unites.

  Then in 1912 The Victor Book of the Opera offered this translation:

  Faithful and true, we lead thee forth

  Where love triumphant shall crown thee with joy.

  Those versions adhere to Wagner’s words—not a sign of “Here Comes the Bride.”

  The film industry was still in its infancy at the time, but nevertheless a great many movies were being made. One particularly prolific writer of film scenarios and scripts was Shannon Fife. Between 1912 and 1929 Fife wrote eighty-three movies, and it was she w
ho penned the title of a 1915 movie and, against all indications from Wagner, came up with Here Comes the Bride. The movie was of course silent, so no song lyrics were required—just the evocative title.

  Shannon Fife’s title almost instantly became the point of reference for Wagner’s melody, and it was open slather. Here Comes the Bride cropped up as the title for a Broadway play, a musical, and several more movies. At least four other sets of lyrics to accompany Wagner’s tune arose, all competing in triteness:

  Here comes the bride, friends by her side,

  Wedding bells ring loud, the door opens wide ...

  and

  Here comes the bride, all dressed in white

  Sweetly, serenely, in soft glowing light.

  Wagner’s melody remains a fixture at many weddings—but in general, only as an instrumental—still referred to by Shannon Fife’s title. Any suggestion of words to the famous tune generally brings a ribald response.

  He’s just not that into you

  In the television series Sex and the City an episode called “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little” went to air in July 2003. In that episode, the character of Miranda was upset because phone calls she had hoped for from a certain man had not eventuated. Berger told her bluntly, “He’s just not that into you.” The line was written by Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky. Comic Greg Behrendt, who was engaged as a consultant, had reputedly explained such a possibility to one of the writers, who was attempting to understand an incident in her own life.

  A year later Behrendt co-authored with Liz Tuccillo the bestselling book He’s Just Not That into You (2004), which became the basis of a full-length feature movie in 2009.

  He who can does, he who cannot teaches

  It has the feel of an ancient proverb, but the line dates back only to 1903: George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman (Appendix 2—“Maxims for Revolutionists”).

  He who hesitates is lost

  This started life in 1713 when British commenter on manners and morals Joseph Addison presented his play Cato. Addison’s words for the character of the dutiful Marcia included:

  When love once pleads admission to our hearts,

  (In spite of all the virtue we can boast),

  The woman that deliberates is lost.

  Over the following centuries, usage modified the verb and eventually reversed the gender, but the essence remained when the expression became “He who hesitates is lost.”

  Hit the nail on the head

  It has a crisp, modern no-nonsense sound, but doesn’t seem modern when you look at its first appearance in English:

  I xal so smytyn ye nayl on ye hed.

  This was written in 1438 by Margery Kempe. Mrs. Kempe was a very religious woman who made arduous journeys from Norfolk to Jerusalem, Rome, Germany, and Spain besides mothering fourteen children. Her Book of Margery Kempe is considered to be the oldest surviving autobiography in English.

  Ho ho ho

  The image of Santa Claus was invented almost entirely by poet Clement Moore in his 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (“Twas the night before Christmas . . . ”). Over the following decades, folklore added considerably to the myth of Mr. Claus, moving him from Turkey (where the real St. Nicholas came from) to the North Pole. But prior to the change of address, author Frank Baum (who also wrote The Wizard of Oz) made his own contribution, now inseparable from Santa Claus in America.

  In a 1902 children’s book called The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Frank Baum had Santa living in the Valley of Hohaho, and singing:

  With a ho ho ho, and a ha ha ha,

  And a ho ho ha ha ha he,

  Now away we go o’er the frozen snow,

  As merry as we can be.

  And ever since Santa’s catchcry has been “Ho ho ho.”

  Hold the fort

  The expression began as an instruction during the American Civil War. In 1864 General Corse and his troops were in a fort at Allatoona. The general had been painfully wounded and had lost a large number of his troops when a message arrived from General William Sherman: “Hold out, relief is coming.”

  Some time later, American poet Philip Bliss attended a YMCA meeting in Rockford, Illinois, at which Civil War officer Major Whittle told the story of the Allatoona battle and Sherman’s message. Hearing about the incident had a great effect on Bliss. Inspired by Sherman’s line, and noting its similarity to Revelations 2:25 (“But that which ye have already, hold fast till I come.”), he sat up that night writing the words and composing the music for a new hymn. His words modified Sherman’s original instruction slightly, and became:

  Hold the Fort for I am Coming, Jesus signals still.

  The hymn was a great success and became a standard of the American evangelists Moody and Sankey, who led its singing throughout America and Britain. Soon the term “hold the fort,” moving away from its literal meaning, became a common expression for keeping everything as normal as possible under difficult circumstances.

  Hollow men

  The title of a reflective and pessimistic 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot (which also refers to the world ending “Not with a bang but a whimper”). The term acquired wide and somewhat unexpected attention when used by Donald Shepherd and Robert F. Slazer as the title of a searing biography of Bing Crosby—The Hollow Man (1982)—whose uncompromising dark side came as an unpleasant surprise to those who had cherished the charming and amiable public persona.

  Hollywood

  Harvey and Daeda Wilcox moved from Kansas to Los Angeles in 1883. Harvey set up as a real estate developer and bought a considerable area of land. In 1886 Daeda went back to Kansas for a visit, and returned to Los Angeles by train. On the train Mrs. Wilcox had a conversation with an unknown woman who said she had named her summer home “Hollywood.”

  Daeda found the name attractive, and back in Los Angeles she suggested their property could be called the same. On February 1, 1887, Harvey Wilcox filed with the county recorder’s office a prepared map of a subdivision to be called Hollywood—the first official registering of what has since become one of the most famous towns in the world.

  (In an attempt to give the area some connection with its name, Mr. Wilcox imported holly bushes from England. But sunny California was not to their liking and the planting project was abandoned.)

  Home James and don’t spare the horses

  There is a wonderful story—which has to be apocryphal—that Queen Victoria had a carriage driver whose name was James Darling. In that period, aristocrats called servants by their surnames, but it was clearly inappropriate that a Queen should address a footman as Darling so she called him James, and occasionally issued the command: “Home James.”

  Whatever truth there is in that tale (probably none), the saying “Home James” was known in the nineteenth century, though not necessarily in connection with horses. “Home James” turns up as a movie “short” title in 1918 and again in 1921, and about the same time is a caption on a Felix the Cat cartoon as Felix heads home riding on an elephant’s trunk.

  The full expression—Home James and don’t spare the horses—became widely known as the result of a song composed by musical comedy actor and prolific song composer Fred Hillebrand. Previously, his songs had been inclined towards the minstrel type, or had South American rhythms. But in 1934 he came up with the jaunty number “Home James.”

  In Britain, a celebrity singer of the time—Elsie Carlisle, known as “Radio Sweetheart Number One”—recorded “Home James and Don’t Spare the Horses” with Burt Ambrose and the Mayfair Hotel Orchestra. The recording was a major success and put “Home James” into nationwide use, this time with the horses included.

  Even though the use of carriage and horses faded, the saying remains as a jocular admonition to get moving, even in a car.

  Elsie Carlisle’s performance of the song was reissued in 1966 in an Ambrose compilation (AMG-R-263315, Pearl Flapper).

  Hot under the collar

  Possibly having heard the expression among the
London writers he knew, expatriate American poet Ezra Pound was the first notable to mention being hot under his collar. He used the expression (to John Quinn) in 1918 when giving vent to his feelings about literary editors:

  After years of this sort of puling imbecility one gets hot under the collar and is perhaps carried to the extreme.

  How’s your father

  In the early 1900s, music hall comic Harry Tate may have been using an existing piece of Cockney rhyming slang: “How’s your father”(= lather). But the phrase attained much wider familiarity as a result of Tate’s comedy performances and took on a new connotation. If one of Tate’s monologues was leading toward anything too suggestive to declare outright, Tate would suddenly break off and address someone in the audience he supposedly recognized, with the query, “And how’s your father?”

  This was done with such comic effect that the phrase developed a strong connection with sexual activity, and also as a way of avoiding mention of anything too complex or boring (as in, ‘I went to the Ministry and there were forms to fill in and that kind of how’s your father.”)

  The British Library shows that the phrase was familiar enough for it to be the title of two songs and one dance, published between 1915 and 1922. And incidentally, Harry Tate, who died in 1940, is believed to have been a pioneer of the personalized number plate: His car had the plate T8.