Nine More Idioms Traced To Their Roots

Idioms find their way into our speech and writing, and these colorful turns of phrase can be even more interesting when you trace them back to their origins.

As mentioned in “Nine Idioms Traced To Their Origins,” I find myself using idioms all the time in my writing and everyday speech. It’s easy to take these phrases for granted, as if they’ve always meant what they mean now, but in reality, these odd turns of language often have strange and curious origins. And even more correctly, as expressed by Anatoly Liberman on the Oxford University Press’s blog:

Unless an idiom happens to be a so-called familiar quotation, its origin is usually unknown. (The origin of familiar quotations is another problem.) Somebody whips the cat, takes care of the whole nine yards, is dressed up to the nines, or, conversely, kicks the bucket. Trying to guess how those phrases came about is a worthy occupation, but, unfortunately, it seldom results in significant discoveries. Suffice it to say that every idiom, like every word, was once coined by an individual. The cleverest and the most memorable words and phrases stayed, and now they are common property, while the inventors’ names are forgotten.

What is an idiom?

An idiom is “an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as ‘up in the air’ for ‘undecided’) or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as ‘give way’)” (Merriam-Webster).

And from Grammarist: “An idiom is a word, group of words, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is not easily deduced from its literal definition. Often using descriptive imagery, common idioms are words and phrases used in the English language in order to convey a concise idea and are often spoken or are considered informal or conversational. English idioms can illustrate emotion more quickly than a phrase that has a literal meaning, even when the etymology or origin of the idiomatic expression is lost. An idiom is a metaphorical figure of speech, and it is understood that it is not a use of literal language.”

Here are another nine idioms, compiled as I continue my editorial endeavors and presented here as an opportunity to ponder the dynamic and enigmatic construct that is the English language.

squared away

Interestingly, many of the idioms I’m researching have nautical or military origins, and “squared away” is among them. Its idiomatic meaning is “to put everything in order or in readiness,” according to Merriam-Webster, though that and other sources also list “to square the yards so as to sail before the wind” and “to take up a fighting stance” as definitions of the phrase. It appears the nautical reference is the earliest, from “square the yards,” which meant that “the yards, the spars that carried the sails, were to be set at right angles to the keel line from bow to stern, a state that was known as square by the braces… Squaring the yards meant that the ship sailed directly downwind” (World Wide Words). In the late 1700s, “square away” meant “to travel directly, without hesitation,” and was later used to mean “getting things in order.” In the early 1800s, in England, the phrase seems to have taken on the meaning of “getting in fighting position,” which in the US is “square off.”

“Before we take off for vacation, I have to get the house and pet sitters squared away.”

shoot the breeze

I thought I might find references to shooting guns in the air, but I didn’t find a specific reference to the word “shoot” in this phrase. According to Grammarist, “shoot the breeze means to chat about inconsequential manners, to converse casually in order to pass the time.” While Wiktionary alludes to this somewhat literally as meaning “to talk into the wind,” Grammarist suggests that in the early 1900s, when this term came into use, “breeze” was slang for “rumor,” which implies that “shooting the breeze” was akin to gossiping.

“I shot the breeze with my colleagues until the moderator joined the Zoom call.”

pigeonhole

This is an interesting study, as the modern meaning evolved over time, but the term stems from a 16th-century noun that literally was “a hole or small recess for pigeons to nest” (Merriam-Webster). Later, the phrase was used to describe a small room and a small, open compartment in a desk. In the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the editors apparently constructed a structure with over a thousand pigeonholes as they sorted and classified words in the late 19th century. In keeping with this, early uses of the word as a verb were more literal, i.e., “to put something in a pigeonhole,” but by the end of the 19th century, “pigeonhole began to be used to mean ‘classify,’ a sense which soon took on the meaning commonly found today: ‘to assign to an often restrictive category'” (Merriam-Webster).

“My band plays songs from 1960 through modern day, but we’re always pigeonholed as a ‘classic rock’ band.”

free rein

As you might have surmised, the expression “free rein” refers to horseback riding and holding the reins — the straps by which a rider controls the horse — loosely so as to allow the horse to freely move along at its own pace and in its desired direction (Merriam-Webster). In the 17th century, that meaning was expanded to mean “unrestricted freedom to act, choose, move, etc.” Of course, people confuse the words “rein” and “reign” all the time, and in this case, to have thought the phrase was “free reign” actually makes some sense. To “reign,” after all, is to possess or exercise sovereign power, so “free reign” could easily mean “to have freedom to rule without restriction.” You can find uses of “free reign” from various sources, but know that the origins, and the “correct” use of the phrase, is “free rein.”

“As event coordinator, I was given free rein to choose the location and accommodations for the party.”

on the money

There seems to be more than one possible origin for this phrase, which means “precisely right.” My favorite suggests it stems from surveying: “When surveyors do their work, they install ‘benchmarks,’ a steel rod hammered into the ground at a known location and elevation. Over time, the tops of these rods tarnish and become difficult to see in the viewfinder of a surveyor’s transit. Putting a shiny coin on the top of the benchmark renders them visible, and when the transit sits level, precisely above it, you are ‘right on the money'” (The Phrase Finder). Another explanation refers to betting on horses, where a winning horse is “on the money” and a losing one would be “out of the money” (Idiomic.com).

“Your assessment of the current state of politics is right on the money, Frank. It’s a complete shit show.”

fit the bill

Here’s another idiom that appears to have multiple possible origins. According to the website of Professor Paul Brians, “In nineteenth-century America, when show producers found short acts to supplement the main attractions, nicely filling out an evening’s entertainment, they were said to ‘fill the bill.’ People who associate bills principally with shipping invoices frequently transform this expression, meaning ‘to meet requirements or desires,’ into ‘fit the bill.’ They are thinking of bills as if they were orders, lists of requirements. It is both more logical and more traditional to say ‘fill the bill.’” The Phrase Finder adds that, in the early 20th century, there are references to this phrase relating to the type of bills that are made into laws, adding that any kind of written document — advertisements, invoices, inventories, shipping labels, catalogs, etc. — was once referred to as a “bill.”

“Your cranberry pecan pie really fit the bill for our Thanksgiving dinner!”

hell-bent for leather

This colorful (and odd) phrase seems to have origins with the British army: “hell for leather,” which meant “all deliberate haste,” dates back to the late 19th century. “Hell-bent,” in the sense of “recklessly determined,” dates back to the first half of the 1800s (Dictionary.com). In that sense, you can be “hell-bent” for all sorts of things, including election and breakfast, according to The Free Dictionary. “Hell-bent for leather” seems to mash up “hell-bent” and “hell for leather,” with leather referencing a horse’s saddle, and has come to mean “moving recklessly fast.”

“She charged out the door, hell-bent for leather, when she heard her boyfriend was at the bar with another woman.”

down to brass tacks

Meaning, “to deal with the important details,” I expected this phrase would have something to do with upholstery and the tacks used on a stately leather chair. But, according to Wiktionary, which offers the most concise, thorough exploration I could find:

One theory is that it comes from the brass tacks in the counter of a hardware store or draper’s shop used to measure cloth in precise units. Another possibility is the 19th-century American practice of using brass tacks to spell out the initials of the deceased on the top of their coffin. Yet another theory is that the phrase arose from the practice of adorning one’s gunstock with brass tacks, as was common in the early American West. According to author Stanley Vestal, “Brass tacks hammered into the stock of the rifle marked the tally of the mountain man’s victims.”

“Okay, everyone, the meeting has started. Let’s stop shooting the breeze and get down to brass tacks.”

dead to rights

“Dead to rights” means having overwhelming evidence of someone’s guilt or irrefutable proof that someone is responsible for something. According to the Grammarist, the phrase has ties to the criminal community in New York City in the mid 19th century, and combines the use of the word “dead” as meaning unequivocal (i.e., dead drunk, dead serious) and “to rights,” meaning “in a proper manner.”

“Now that we have that surveillance camera footage, we’ve got him dead to rights.”

References:
Merriam-Webster
World Wide Words
Grammarist
Wiktionary
The Phrase Finder
Idiomic
Website of Professor Paul Brians
Dictionary.com
The Free Dictionary