Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Go with the flow

 I have to say, the phrase go with the flow has a very late-'60s (as in: 1960s) vibe to me, as in: "Hey man, be cool, go with the flow." But I figured I'd better take a look around and see when it first came into use, idiomatically speaking...

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer provides the definition to "move along with the prevailing forces, accept the prevailing trend," and adds this for its origin:

...[F]low in [this] colloquial term, which dates from the late 1900s, alludes to the ebb and flow of the tides and probably gained currency because of its appealing rhyme.

The Idioms website reaches waaaay back in history for the phrase's origin, noting:

This expression was first recorded to be used by the Roman Emperor, Marcus Arelius, in his writings “The Meditations”. He penned a lot about the flow of happiness and thoughts and he surmised that most things flow naturally and in his opinion it was better to go with the flow than to try and change society. Then sometime in 1960s America, this expression was ascribed to the hippies, who liked outdoor activities but also espoused a philosophy of taking life easy, not getting worked up, not struggling or fighting. These people drew an analogy from the way they kayaked and rafted on white water to the way life should be led, by going with the flow.

Green's Dictionary of Slang (which is an awesome reference work, by the way) also points to a more recent idiomatic "first use":

go with the flow (v.) [a mass popularization of the more complex dictum of US psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–87), who saw life as ‘floating with a complex streaming of experience’] to accept a situation and make no attempt to alter it, to act passively.

Green's also offers up a quote from the 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe as an "early" (possibly "first use?") quote: 

No one was to rise up negative about anything, one was to go positive with everything — go with the flow — everyone's cool was to be tested...

Curious, I checked Google books to see if go with the flow appears in italics in Wolfe's book, and it does! So, I'd be willing to bet this was indeed a very early appearance of this phrase, slang-wise.

Hey. I'm cool with that.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Come in through the hawse-pipe

 As I head to Seattle for the Left Coast Crime mystery conference this week, it seems apt to highlight a fairly obscure (to me, anyway!) nautical expression that I bumped into while writing The Secret in the Wall: Come in through the hawse-pipe.

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I no longer recall where I first read this term, but do remember being befuddled. I had no idea what a hawse-pipe was, and as an expression, come in (or up) through the hawse-pipe clearly meant something idiomatic, although it wasn't at all clear to me what that meaning was. However, since the expression was nautical in origin and popped up in 19th century writings,  I really wanted to use it in my book. But first, I had to track down the meaning!

According to an article about nautical language on the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Center website, a hawse-pipe is a pipe in the ship's bow for the anchor cable to run through. The entry continues, "Anybody who has risen to Captain from lowly deckhand is said to have come up through the hawse-pipe." A page on the USS Constitution Museum site also provides the same definition :

... A person makes officer by "coming up through the hawse hole (or pipe)". Meaning, that person rose through the ranks from the lowest rating as an enlisted individual to that of a commissioned officer.

If you want more information about hawse holes (or pipes) and the restoration of the USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides"), please check out the whole article.

And with that, it's time for me to set sail, er, that is, hop a flight and head north to Seattle!

There's a hawse-pipe there, somewhere...
Portrait (circa 1895) of the full-rigged ship Canada, painted by Antonio Jacobsen (1850-1921). Portrait is part of the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, accession number M96.43.369. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Catch as catch can

 When catch as catch can crossed my mind the other day, I stopped and pondered. I knew the definition of this phrase—hit or miss, or (as Merriam-Webster says) "using any available means or method"—but had no idea of the origin. 

And what a strange phrase, right?

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M-W goes on to say that the first use of this phrase in the sense of "hit-or-miss" was 1833. Okay, but where did it even come from??

After some looking around online, I found this explanation on the site Writing Explained:

...This phrase comes from an old style of wrestling that allowed participants to use many moves not usually permitted in wrestling. For example, catch as catch can wrestlers may hold each other below the waist or even trip each other. Therefore, catch as catch can wrestlers take advantage of any opportunity afforded to them, including opportunities not usually use by other wrestlers. Likewise, when something is described as catch as catch can, it is done in a way that allows any advantage possible to be used.  

Writing Explained then pointed to a reference I have on my (physical, vs virtual) blookshelf: The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. This dictionary defines the phase as "by whatever means or in any way possible," and dates it from the late 1300s... which is pretty darn early.

I was curious as to the wrestling connection, and found a site called Old School Grappling which on its The History of Catch Wrestling page includes the following: 

Catch-as-Catch-Can (or catch wrestling) although its true origins have been lost in history, is deeply rooted in Lancashire England and is considered the ancestor of modern professional wrestling and mixed martial arts competitions. In old Lancashire English catch-as-catch-can is translated to “catch me if you can.”

I have to say that when I'm "wrestling" with an issue and "grappling" for a solution, I can appreciate the mental hit-or-miss aspects of making a catch as catch can decision.

Sometimes deciding which way to turn is a catch as catch can conundrum.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: A day late and a dollar short

 Well, I'm more than a day late and a dollar short on this post, but thanks to Blogger I can pre-date this entry so it appears I put it up Wednesday, March 27. However, I will confess that, as I type this, it is much later in the week....

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A day late and a dollar short sounds like a lament that could have originated at any time in history that the word "dollar" was in use... maybe even in the 1800s. The Grammarist has a post on this idiom, and says (amongst other things):

...Originally, the phrase a day late and a dollar short most probably referred to not having enough money to avail oneself of something. The oldest known use of the phrase a day late and a dollar short in print was in 1939. The idiom was most certainly in common use before this, and probably has its roots in the general poverty common among most American citizens during the Great Depression. The idiom is very popular in the American South....

And, folks, that's about all I can find about this phrase (much to my surprise). I guess I will have to accept that although a day late and a dollar short might "fly" in fiction taking place in the 1920s, it wouldn't for anything set in the 19th century.

Darn it.

Wiktionary definition of a day late and a dollar short:
"Too late and too feeble to achieve the desired effect."
 Image by heeyeon Sun from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Bee in your bonnet

Can I have someone from the 19th century say You've got a bee in your bonnet! (meaning "preoccupied or obsessed with an idea")? Or would that be anachronistic?

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It looks like I'm safe in doing so! According to this post in Mental Floss, which offers up these tidbits on the earliest use (and possible origins):

...One of the earliest examples of a similar bee-based phrase can be found in Scottish poet and clergyman Gavin Douglas’s 1513 translation of Virgil’s epic Aeneid into Scottish verse, in which he writes, “Quhat bern be thou in bed, with hed full of beys.” The sentence roughly translates to “What, man, rot thou in bed with thy head full of bees,” and alludes to a Scottish idiom about having a “head full of bees,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “having a fantasy, an eccentric whim, a craze on some point, [or] a ‘screw loose.’”...

It’s likely that bee in your bonnet evolved from that Scottish idiom to its more modern interpretation: That of having such a singular focus on a particular idea, seemingly to the point of obsession. The Reverend John Barker certainly gave the Scots credit when he offered one of the earliest recorded examples of the more familiar phrase in a 1738 letter to the Reverend Philip Doddridge: “He has, as the Scotch call it, a Bee in his Bonnet."

The post goes on and is quite fun to read (check it out!)... The Phrase Finder also has a similar entry here, which also references Doddridge's letter.

This being spring, with bees emerging and buzzing about, be careful not to get any bees in your bonnet. Better that there be bees in your garden!

Now here's someone who clearly *wants* to have a bee in her bonnet.
Image by Davinia from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Benjo! (and Left Coast Crime)

 I'm happy to report that I'll be at Left Coast Crime in Seattle next month and part of a lovely panel on one of my favorite topics: Slang! The panel, titled "Slang Me: Dialogue Through History" will be in Grand C on Friday, April 12, 4 p.m. The other panelists are Sarah Niebuhr Rubin (moderator), Sarah M. Chen, Tessa Floreano, and Jeanne Matthews. 

 Looking for a lovely slang word from the past to offer today, I bumped into benjo (which I first misread as "banjo." Nooo connection.)  According to Mental Floss, benjo is 19th-century sailor slang for “A riotous holiday, a noisy day in the streets.” Woot and huzzah! While I was writing THE SECRET IN THE WALL, I spent a fair bit of time swimming through nautical slang (since a number of secondary characters were "men of the sea."), so I was doubly pleased with this definition. 

I did have trouble finding the word with this meaning elsewhere (it appears as a first and last name, and has different definitions in different languages and timeframes)... but did find it referenced in Green's Dictionary of Slang under the entry for bender:

bender n.2 [? the image of a drunkard (or drug user) as unsteady on their feet; or ? f. an image of bending a bow or elbow. Note naut. jargon benjo, a spree, f. Ital./Lingua Fr. buengiorno, a good day]

 If it's good enough for Green's, it's good enough for me and for Slang-o-rama!

Sailors at a drunken orgy.
Mezzotint by W. Ward, 1807, after J.C. Ibbetson, 1802. (A scene in an unspecified tavern at Portsmouth after one or more ships have been paid off.)
Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-04-02), CC BY 4.0, Link

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: The cat's meow

 Way back in 2021, I Slang-o-rama'd (how's that for a verb??) about the cat's pajamas. I believe a post on the cat's meow is a tad overdue. Let's rectify that now.

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According to Merriam-Webster, the cat's meow is "a highly admired person or thing," with the first known use being in 1921. Boy, I'd sure like to know what that first appearance was... That being said, I was so pleased to then find this phrase in the online Green's Dictionary of Slang, which is a marvelous reference for this kind of thing. Sure enough, they note that, according to Leonard Zwilling's "A TAD Lexicon. Etymology and Linguistic Principles: V.3," (1993) San Francisco cartoonist Tad (T.A.) Dorgan wrote "Some party. Some home made hooch. — Gee — I feel like the cat’s meow." I'd sure love to see THAT cartoon!

Green's Dictionary also offers a gaggle of slangy synonyms—cat’s tonsillitis, duck’s quack, elephant’s tonsils, pig’s scream, sparrow’s chirp—and examples. If you're curious, check out the entry here. 

In the meantime, here is a photo of... yes... a cat's meow.