High TIme - Double Meaning
We normally think of this phrase as meaning that "Now" is the time to do something. An example might be, "We are almost out of black ink. It's high time we got some more on order."
This phrase has also been used to mean 'a heated argument', but that meaning is unused and archaic now.
The origin of "High Time"
'High time' derives from the allusion to the warmest time of day - when the sun is highest in the sky. High noon is another way of saying it. Shakespeare used it in his Comedy of Errors, 1590:
There's none but witches do inhabit here;
And therefore 'tis high time that I were hence.
She that doth call me husband, even my soul
Origin "A High Time"
'High times' comes from the same root as 'high days and holidays', i.e. days of religious note and festivals. High in that sense has been used in English since the middle ages, although there are few references to it in print until the 19th century, as in this from the Canadian newspaper, The British Colonist, 1858:
"The Johns had a high time, drinking brandy and eating fried hog."
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Hot off the press means freshly printed.
This term is applied especially to newspapers. Newsprint used to be printed by a process called 'hot metal printing', which involved molten lead being introduced into a mould to form the printing block. Although the term only really makes literal sense for printed items which use that process, it is by extension now also used figuratively to refer to anything that is fresh and newly made.
Hot off (or from) the press (or presses) didn't originate as a phrase until the 20th century. For example, this from an advertisement in the New Jersey newspaper The Trenton Evening Times, July 1910:
Just hot off the press and a strictly up-to-date cut price sheet of great value to housekeepers.
The hotness is a clear allusion to the hot metal process, but may also allude to an usage of the phrase hot news, i.e. striking or sensational news. This was used in a Daily Express story in September 1914:
'Hot news' ... must be provided for the people, and thus we learn from the Vienna 'Abendblatt' that General French is a prisoner.
The area's first settlers were Native American tribes whose descendants now occupy the Cocopah and Quechan reservations. In 1540, expeditions under Hernando de Alarcon and Melchior Diaz visited the area and immediately saw the natural crossing of the Colorado River as an ideal spot for a city. Later military expeditions that crossed the Colorado River at the Yuma Crossing include Juan Bautista de Anza in1774, the Mormon Battalion in1848 and the California Column in 1862.
Following the establishment of Fort Yuma, a town sprang up on the New Mexico (now Arizona) side of the Colorado. The townsite was duly registered in San Diego, demonstrating that both banks of the Colorado River just below its junction with the Gila were recognized as being within the jurisdiction of California. The county of San Diego collected taxes from there for many years.] The town, initially called Colorado City, was renamed Arizona City in 1858. It took the name Yuma in 1873.
Steamboats at Yuma Landing, CA, 1880From the 1850s through the 1870s, the Yuma Crossing was known for its steamboat crossing. It was a stop on the way up and down the river. The steamboats transported passengers and equipment for the various mines and military outposts. The Yuma Quartermaster Depot, today a state historic park, supplied all forts in present-day Arizona, as well large parts of New Mexico, Colorado, New Mexico. Yuma served as the gateway to the new Republic (later State) of California, as it was one of the few natural spots where travelers could cross the otherwise very wide Colorado River. After Arizona became a separate territory, Yuma became the county seat for the area in 1864.
Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different (but related) forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction, including “true” dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weekly libraries, “thick book” reprints, and sometimes even early pulp magazines. The term was being used as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp Western Dime Novels. Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the antecedent of today’s mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work.
It is generally agreed that the term originated with the first book in Beadle & Adam's Beadle’s Dime Novel series, Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, by Ann S. Stephens, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was essentially a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April 1839. The dime novels varied in size, even within this first Beadle series, but were roughly 6.5 by 4.25 inches, with 100 pages. The first 28 were published without a cover illustration, in a salmon colored paper wrapper, but a woodblock print was added with issue 29, and reprints of the first 28 had an illustration added to the cover. Of course, the books were priced at ten cents.
This series ran for 321 issues, and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the melodramatic double titling that was used right up to the very end in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales reprinted from the vast backlog of serials in the story papers and other sources, as well as many originals.
As the popularity of dime novels increased, original stories came to be the norm. The books were themselves reprinted many times, sometimes with different covers, and the stories were often further reprinted in different series, and by different publishers.
Beadle’s Dime Novels were immediately popular among young, working-class audiences, owing to an increased literacy rate around the time of the American Civil War. By the war’s end, there were numerous competitors like George Munro and Robert DeWitt crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color choice of the paper wrappers. Even Beadle & Adams had their own alternate "brands", such as the Frank Starr line. As a whole, the quality of the fiction was derided by higher brow critics and the term 'dime novel' quickly came to represent any form of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format.
In 1874, Beadle & Adams by added the novelty of color to the covers when their New Dime Novels series replaced the flagship title. The New Dime Novels were issued with a dual numbering system on the cover, one continuing the numbering from the first series, and the second and more prominent one indicating the number within the current series, i.e., the first issue was numbered 1. The stories were largely reprints from the first series. Like its predecessor, Beadle’s New Dime Novels ran for 321 issues, until 1885.
Meaning: Raining very heavily.
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.
It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."
This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in bad weather.
Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by.
The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated.
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Dog Days" (Latin: dies caniculares) are the hottest, most sultry days of summer. In the northern hemisphere, they usually fall between early July and early September. In the southern hemisphere they are usually between January and early March. The actual dates vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate. Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress. The name comes from the ancient belief that Sirius, also called the Dog Star, in close proximity to the sun was responsible for the hot weather.
The nameThe Romans referred to the dog days as dies caniculares and associated the hot weather with the star Sirius. They considered Sirius to be the "Dog Star" because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog). Sirius is also the brightest star in the night sky. The term "Dog Days" was used earlier by the Greeks.
The Dog Days originally were the days when werewolves rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.
Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, Quinto raged in anger, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813.
The modern French term for both this summer period (and for heat waves in general) "canicule", derives from this same term. It means "little dog", again referring to Sirius.
At the end of the Apache Wars, the protection of Fort Huachuca and the completion of the Southern Pacific and the El Paso & Southwestern railroads, the San Pedro Valley began to populate. Oliver Fry and his two oldest sons traveled from Texas on the railroad and settled on 320 acres (1.3 km2) just outside of Fort Huachuca around 1901.
The first business that opened just outside the east gate of Fort Huachuca was a saloon and house of ill repute owned by John and Ellen Reilly opened in 1892. In 1911, Margaret Carmichael bought the Reilly homestead and business. By 1913, Margaret Carmichael had leased the business back to the Reillys. Also in 1913, a group of dry land farmers settled in the local area and named their settlement Buena. Buena was located east of Garden Canyon on a railroad whistle-stop between Lewis Springs and Fort Huachuca. At this site was a post office and a school house that served children in Buena, Garden Canyon and outreaches of the local area.
By 1917, the Overton Post Office was established. This settlement's name comes from the Overton Mercantile and Investment Company, who took option on the Carmichael property with plans to develop a townsite outside of Fort Huachuca. However, it is believed that the company was unable to persuade anyone to move to the area so when the option expired, the Carmichaels took back the property and a general mercantile store.
In 1918, the Carmichaels changed the name of the store and were the proprietors of the "Garden Canyon." Garden Canyon was also the name of the post office and Carmichael was the postmaster. In addition, the Carmichaels built a home across the street from Garden Canyon store, as well as 18 rock houses, on Garden Avenue. From 1927 to 1938, the Frys rented the Carmichael store.
In 1955, the first attempt to incorporate and rename the area was rejected, as Fry opposed both incorporating and renaming the town that bore his family name. In 1956, the ballot issue failed 76 to 61. People who owned land outside of Fry's property went forward with incorporation and renaming by petition on May 26, 1956, excluding the half-square-mile owned by Fry.
Sierra Vista was incorporated in 1956, and has an estimated population over 49,000 today. The city is the economic and commercial center of Cochise County, and northern Sonora, Mexico. Sierra Vista annexed Fort Huachuca, a U.S. military base, one of the largest employers in Arizona, and the adjacent community, in 1971.
Father's Day is a celebration of fathers inaugurated in the early twentieth century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting. Father's Day is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide and typically involves gift-giving, special dinners to fathers, and family-oriented activities.
The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia, on December 6, 1907. It's possible that Clayton was influenced by the first celebration of Mother's Day that same year, just a few miles away. Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently deceased father.
Unfortunately, the day was overshadowed by other events in the city, West Virginia did not officially register the holiday, and it was not celebrated again. All the credit for Father's Day went to Sonora Dodd from Spokane, who invented independently her own celebration of Father's Day just two years later, also influenced by Jarvis' Mother's Day.
Clayton's celebration was forgotten until 1972, when one of the attendants to the celebration saw Nixon's proclamation of Father's Day, and worked to recover its legacy. The celebration is now held every year in the Central United Methodist Church – the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was torn down in 1922. Fairmont is now promoted as the "Home of the First Father's Day Service".
A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized. US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two parents." In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
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According to the Macmillan English Dictionary, if a place or an organization is going to the dogs, it is not as good as it was in the past. People often say things like “This country’s going to the dogs. Things aren’t like they were 30 years ago” or “This train service is going to the dogs. The trains are always late. The seats are uncomfortable and the fares are high”.
The origin of this expression is believed to be in ancient China where dogs, by tradition, were not permitted within the walls of cities. Consequently, stray dogs roamed the areas outside the city walls and lived off the rubbish thrown out of the city by its inhabitants. Criminals and social outcast were often expelled from cities and were sent to live among the rubbish – and the dogs. Such people were said to have “gone to the dogs”, both literally in that was where they were now to be found, and metaphorically in the sense that their lives had taken a distinct turn for the worse.
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Celebrated every June 14th in the USA, millions of Americans observe Flag Day by waving Old Glory outside their homes and businesses. Veteran's groups and sometimes whole communities also arrange civic functions and special ceremonies in honor of Flag Day.
As the legend goes, it was George Washington and two other members of the Continental Congress who asked Betsy Ross to sew the first American flag sometime in the late spring of 1776. The young widow was only in her early 20's when she completed the first flag with thirteen stars arranged in a circle.
A year later, the Continental Congress officially adopted the design for the national flag, and henceforward the Stars and Stripes symbolized the U.S. around the world.
The first "official" Flag Day was celebrated in 1877 - the flag's centennial. In 1916, a grass roots movement resulted in President Woodrow Wilson issuing a proclamation that called for a nationwide observance of Flag Day on June 14. Although still not an official holiday, Flag Day was made a permanent observance in America in 1949 by Congress who resolved "That the 14th day of June of each year is hereby designated as Flag Day."
Flag Day fun facts
Why red, white and blue? To the original members of the Continental Congress, red stood for hardiness and courage, white for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance and justice.
Why thirteen stars and stripes? They represented the thirteen American colonies which rallied around the new flag in their fight against the British for self-governance.
The thirteen colonies included Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.
To this day, thirteen stripes still commemorate the original colonies. Instead of thirteen stars, today the number of stars on the US flag has grown to 50, representing every state in the Union.
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| Butterfly Lodge Museum |
The first settler was reportedly Amberion Englevason, who built a small cabin. In a few short years, Mormons began to settle in the area, and it began to grow. Served by rail and known as "Lee Valley", after the Willard Lee family, Ellis Whitney Wiltbank and his family built the first sawmill and established and LDS ward. School was first taught in 1879 and continued to be taught in the same building until 1930.
The area became known as Greer (named after pioneer Americus Vespucius Greer) when the first post-office was established. In 1888 fencing, timbering, homesteading, fishing and hunting became regulated with the Forest Reserve Act, and Greer became a part of the Apache Forest and under USFS control. With the advent of the automobile, better roads, entreprenuers wanting to serve the area and the growing number of vacationers, began to come. James Willard Schultz built the first built a hunting lodge, Apuni Oyis (Butterfly Lodge) in 1913 across from the Riverside Ranger Station. Schultz went on to write 37 books of Indian adventures during his colorful career, and later gave the cabin to his son, Hart Merriam Schultz (Lone Wolf) who was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as America's first Indian artist. This historic structure is now Butterfly Lodge Museum.
Mollie Butler, the daughter of founder Ellis Whitney Wiltbank, was taking in guests as early as 1908 and her legendary hospitality continued until her death in 1964. Other enterprises conducted by year-round families in Greer, and many kin to each other, included a service station, grocery store that sold fresh vegetables grown in a garden beside the store, ice cut from the Greer Lakes, horse rentals, guide services, saw and shingle mills, carpentry, bakers, barbers, boot makers, a printer, fish hatchery, and the like.
Many of these businesses are still in operation in one form or another, and this lends to a tapestry of history, and a lifestyle whose traditions are still honored to this day. With only approximately 90 full-time residents who work in tourist-related industries, and some retirees, both young and older, Greer attracts some 200,000 visitors each year, but still retains it's unspoiled beauty and a lifestyle that is unmatched.
The Weekly Arizonian was a newspaper published in Arizona Territory with a checkered existence from 1859 to 1871. It holds a special place in Arizona history as its first printed work, first newspaper and first political organ.
It was in this setting that the Weekly Arizonian made its debut at Tubac on 3 March 1859. From its first issue, the Arizonian’s avowed policy was to promote the resources of the area, and secure a separate government for Arizona. It was a four-page tabloid printed on a Washington hand press. The press had been shipped from Ohio by William Wrightson of the Santa Rita Mining Company. It had traveled by ship down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, across the Gulf to Panama, through the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas, and thence by ox-cart to Tubac. It took about two months to set up shop for the newspaper. Edward Ephraim Cross, who had journalistic experience in Cincinnati, assumed the mantel of editor. He had been in Tubac since November 1858, and had been sending dispatches to Eastern newspapers. He was virtually the sole source of information about Arizona to the outside world.
Cross soon ran afoul of Sylvester Mowry, the most prominent citizen in Tubac, the bone of contention being Mowry’s allegedly exaggerated population estimates of Arizona and the territory’s presumed agricultural potential. Mowry had recently retired from the Army at Fort Yuma, and was twice elected as delegate to Washington for the proposed territory of Arizona, but Congress, not recognizing Arizona as an organized territory, refused to seat him. Cross and Mowry, who agreed on their aspirations for the development of Arizona, but represented rival mining interests, settled their differences in a bloodless duel on 8 July 1859.
Cross’s aggressive editorial policy continued to bring political pressure on the mining company which owned the Arizonian. Sylvester Mowry and his friend William Oury purchased the newspaper for $2,500 on 21 July 1859. Cross lingered in Tubac for a while, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he returned to his native New Hampshire, took a colonel’s commission, and died of wounds at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
In April 1860 this office published the Constitution of the Provisional Government of the Territory of Arizona, and the proceedings of the convention in Tucson. This was the first book published in Arizona. Two months later the newspaper suspended publication, perhaps due to Wells’ other political commitments.
Charles Strong, a printer from New York, and T.M. Turner, a journalist from Ohio, entered into a six-month agreement to revive the Arizonian as publisher and editor respectively. Little is known of the paper’s continued troubles, but Turner quit within a month and in his farewell issue advertised a pair of Pocket Derringers, apparently standard armament for editors in those days. He should have kept them, for he was murdered in Las Vegas six months later. The paper limped on without the financial support it had expected, and suspended publication a second time in September 1861.
Although no newspaper was being published in Tucson, the press of the Arizonian was used in 1865 to publish the Territory’s first known Spanish document, a translation of the Howell Code adopted by the First Legislature in 1864. The Arizonian was no more on april 29, 1871.
The old Tubac press which had inaugurated the history of printing in Arizona went on to launch the Tucson Arizona Star in 1877, the Tombstone Nugget in 1879 and the Tombstone Epitaph in 1880. In 1933 the Epitaph editor donated the relic to the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, and the press was later put on display at the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park. In 1959 Frank Giffen printed four centennial commemorative issues of the Arizonian which were mailed from Tubac. In 1957 Edward Cross was inducted into the Arizona Newspapers Association Hall of Fame, as was Pierson Dooner in 1996.
As is often the case with idioms, no one's positive of the origins of "cat got your tongue." However, there's no shortage of theories. Here are a few, in no particular order...
Theory #1
The saying comes from the Middle East, where as punishment, liars had their tongues ripped out and fed to the king's cats.
Theory #2
Fear of a whipping with a cat-o'-nine-tails, or "cat" for short, could paralyze a victim into silence.
Theory #3
The expression comes from the Middle Ages when witches were greatly feared and often put to death. It was believed that if you saw a witch, her cat would somehow "steal" or control your tongue so you couldn't report the sighting.
Theory #4
This one comes from Evan Morris, the Word Detective: "There's no particular logic to 'cat got your tongue,' except that cats have served as the object of human myth and metaphor for thousands of years."
This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are probably at least a half a dozen more possible explanations. Let's just leave it at this: "Like the history of the word 'cat' itself, the origins of this expression is as mysterious as the Sphinx."
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The phrase under the weather, meaning to be ill is commonly thought to be of nautical origin. Mariners are concerned with weather and to be beneath a storm is not a pleasant prospect. A slightly different nautical explanation of the origin of the phrase is a clipping of under the weather bow, the weather bow being the side of a ship's bow that is taking the brunt of rough seas. But neither explanation holds up under scrutiny.
Instead, this phrase is an Americanism that dates to 1827. The contexts of early citations are not nautical at all. The phrase probably comes from the idea that the weather can affect one mood and health.
The presence of silver and copper has been known in the area around what is now Jerome since the Spanish colonial era when Arizona was part of New Spain. A mining town named Jerome was established on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor who owned the mineral rights and financed mining there. Eugene Jerome never visited his namesake town. Jerome was incorporated as a town on 8 March 1889. Local merchant and rancher William Munds was the first mayor. The town housed the workers in the nearby United Verde Mine, which was to produce over 1 billion dollars in copper, gold and silver over the next 70 years.
Jerome became a notorious "wild west" town, a hotbed of prostitution, gambling, and vice. On 5 February 1903, the New York Sun proclaimed Jerome to be "the wickedest town in the West". In 1915 the population of Jerome was estimated at 2,500.
Starting in May 1917 there was a series of miners strikes, in part organized by the Industrial Workers of the World. On 10 July of that year, armed agents of the mine owners roughly rounded up all the suspected labor union organizers and unionized miners, forced them on to railroad cattle cars, and shipped them out of town, letting them out on 12 July near Kingman, Arizona. They were warned to stay away from Jerome on threat of death. This event is known as the Jerome Deportation.
Jerome had three major fires between 1897 and 1899, burning out much of the town. The 1899 fire prompted Jerome to reincorporate as a city, and to adopt a building code specifying brick or masonry construction, as well as improving the fire companies. Despite these changes, the large and luxurious Montana Hotel, built of brick, burned in 1915. By 1929 Jerome's population was over 15,000 and Arizona had become the nation's leading copper producer.
By 1932 the price of copper had sunk to 5 cents per pound, and the United Verde closed until 1935, when Phelps Dodge bought the mine for $21 million. The United Verde and Jerome prospered in the war years, but the end was now in sight. Phelps Dodge closed the Clarkdale smelter in 1950. In 1953 the last of Jerome's mines closed, and much of the population left town. Jerome's population reached a low point of about 50 people in the late 1950s. In 1967 Jerome was designated a Historic District, and a National Historic Landmark in 1976, known as Jerome Historic District.
A newspaper is a regularly scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a day. The worldwide recession of 2008, combined with the rapid growth of web-based alternatives, caused a serious decline in advertising and circulation, as many papers closed or sharply retrenched operations.
General-interest newspapers typically publish stories on local and national political events and personalities, crime, business, entertainment, society and sports. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing editorials written by an editor and columns that express the personal opinions of writers. The newspaper is typically funded by paid subscriptions and advertising.
A wide variety of material has been published in newspapers, including editorial opinions, criticism, persuasion and op-eds; obituaries; entertainment features such as crosswords, sudoku and horoscopes; weather news and forecasts; advice, food and other columns; reviews of movies, plays and restaurants; classified ads; display ads, television listings, inserts from local merchants, editorial cartoons and comic strips.
The Oxford English Dictionary agrees with you that “let the cat out of the bag” means to disclose a secret.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1760 quotation from the London Magazine: “We could have wished that the author … had not let the cat out of the bag.”
Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English gives an earlier date, 1750, though it doesn’t provide a source.
Some relate the phrase to a 'cat' referred to is the cat o' nine tails, which was used to flog sailors for disclipine. Again, this has sufficient historical record to be at least possible. The cat o' nine tails was widely used and was referred to in print many years prior to the first use of 'let the cat out of the bag'. The 'nine tails' part of the name derives from the three strands of cord that the whips were made from. When unbraied the whip separated into nine strings. The 'cat' part no doubt alluded to the scratches that the knotted ends of the lash made on the sailor's back, like those from a cat's claws.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms agrees with the Brewer’s explanation. It dates “let the cat out of the bag” from the mid-1700s and says:
“This expression alludes to the dishonest practice of a merchant substituting a worthless cat for a valuable pig, which is discovered only when the buyer gets home and opens the bag.”
One would have to be a pretty slow to mistake a cat, no doubt meowing and trying to claw its way out of the bag, for a squealing baby pig. Wouldn’t most people look to see what they were getting for their money?
The word sleuth Michael Quinion doesn’t buy the pig story either. On his website World Wide Words, he says the expression “let the cat out of the bag” does indeed date back to the mid-18th century, but he adds:
“Anybody who has ever kept a live cat in a bag for more than a couple of seconds will know that even the most gullible purchaser would hardly mistake it for a piglet. It may just possibly be that the phrase comes from the explosive exit of a cat from a bag when it’s opened, so suggesting an original connection more with the shock and surprise of the event than of disclosure of the secret itself.”
1,000 Business Card sized Indoor Magnets 4/0 (Full Color One Sides), 17pt UV Coated. Just $165.00 from customer supplied art. Delivered!
At MI Printing we can take care of all of your specialty printing needs. Learn about the many options for your specialty printing. Please give us a call at 623-582-1302.
Sales tax, if necessary, not included. Please ask about money saving larger quantities. For best results a PDF file is required for the customer supplied artwork.
