Edible idioms
Here’s a brief collection of English idioms based on foods.
You don’t know beans!
This idiom seems to have shown up in the 1850s. Linguists pose
two differing arguments for its source. One school suggests that because beans
are both small & a basic food source, to not know beans is to not
understand the simple basics of life. The second school cites a rural American
riddle: How many blue beans does it take to make seven white beans? The answer
is, (for those of you who don’t know beans) seven. To make
blue beans white you simply peel off the skin. Apparently this was seen as
common knowledge. Anyone who couldn’t answer the riddle didn’t know beans.
Hard-boiled
This
is a tricky one because though it appears to a food-based-idiom, it isn’t.
It
comes from the steamy kitchens of the American frontier. Those who did the
laundry typically used lye soap (which wasn’t as effective as it might have
been). When the clothes got too dingy, launderers of the day boiled them for an
extended time with starch. Pieces of clothing that had received this treatment
tended to be uncomfortably stiff, & were referred to as hard-boiled.
At some point the term morphed to describe a person who was likely wearing
over-starched clothing & shared that clothing’s characteristics of being unyielding and emotionless.
Fishing for information
This
idiom was introduced by none other than Geoffrey Chaucer in Canterbury Tales. Historians tell us
Chaucer was quite the fisherman (in the literal sense). The intimate nature of Canterbury Tales shows us he was
apparently also gifted at fishing for information.
Cheesecake
In
1934, Time magazine appears to have
coined this idiom, & defined it to mean, “leg-pictures of sporty females.”
Like many idioms, this one reflects its times. The “sporty females”
photographed in Time magazine all had
skin the color of cheesecake. Modern cheesecake shots do not discriminate
in terms of skin color & generally involve exposure of more than the legs.
Ham
If
it takes a little digging to see racist attitudes or flat-out racism reflected
in the birth of the idiom cheesecake, seeing racism in the
origins of the idiom ham takes no digging at all. The
minstrel shows of the 1800s that often featured white actors in “black face”
are responsible. Often, the makeup was removed by use of ham fat. It seems the
use of ham fat in concert with the horrible acting associated with
many of these thespians gave birth to the idiom.
Nothing
like a food-based idiom, eh? I’m hoping you’ll have something to say about it
all in the comments section.
Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, & Webb Garrison’s Why You Say
It (1992 - Thomas Nelson)
Wow! I sure didn't know beans about any of these idioms! I'm surprised I'd never heard where the word "ham" came from, since I was in the theater for many years. But it makes sense that before the days of petroleum-based cold cream, lard would have made the best make-up remover. And I've read a lot of "hard-boiled" detective stories, but I didn't have a clue that the idiom came from boiled, starchy laundry!
ReplyDeleteThanks again for all the wisdom, Mr. Monger!
Hi Anne & thanks again,
DeleteI'd heard something about "knowing beans" before" but the others took me by surprise, too.
Although it sounds like food, to egg somebody on doesn't mean throwing eggs at them: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/egg-on.html
ReplyDelete(This is from Lee Sutter of Los Osos, but couldn't figure out how to comment as such)
Hello Lee - thanks for comings by & throwing some eggs into the mix. Please accept my apologies for the misbehavior of the digital elves.
Delete