Last week I was dancing the hokey pokey, and this week I'm winging it, because, well, I'm wondering when wing it came to mean improvise. (I sure hope it was before 1880, but I have an awful feeling that maybe it has to do with airplanes or some such...)
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According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the characters from my Silver Rush series should probably not wing it, although if they have some theater background, I might be able to squeak by. Here's the OED entry:
Verbal phrase wing it (1885) is said to be from a theatrical slang sense of an actor learning his lines in the wings before going onstage, or else not learning them at all and being fed by a prompter in the wings; but perhaps it is simply an image of a baby bird taking flight from the nest for the first time (the phrase is attested in this sense from 1875).
Hmmmm, 1885. Since my series has now inched up into 1882 San Francisco (which had many many theaters, dance halls, etc., in this timeframe), I'm thinking that the phrase might have been in verbal use by then.
Maybe.
Looking around a bit more, I came across this in The Phrase Finder:
'Winging it' is a theatrical expression which refers to impromptu performances that given by actors who had hurriedly learned their lines while waiting in the wings and then received prompts from there. This phrase dates from the late 19th century and the verb 'to wing' was defined in an 1885 edition of Stage magazine: "'To wing'... indicates the capacity to play a rôle without knowing the text, and the word itself came into use from the fact that the artiste frequently received the assistance of a special prompter, who... stood... screened by a piece of the scenery or a wing."
Well, that's good to know. At least the origin of the phrase doesn't have anything to do with mechanical flight...
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| No winging it when you're on stage in 1874. The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage by Edgar Degas, ca. 1874 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436155 |
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