As I prepare to "take to the skies" to attend the Public Safety Writers Association conference in Las Vegas this coming weekend, I am musing slang that has a touch of travel about it. For instance, where the rubber meets the road sounds like a saying made for a journey. However...
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... as Word Histories notes, this phrase doesn't really have much to do with roads and wheels. Rather, it means "where the important facts or realities lie" or "where theory is put into practice." Word Histories dates the earliest appearance of this phrase to 1956 and adds
...With one exception, all the texts containing the earliest occurrences of the phrase that I have found indicate that it originated in the jargon of the advertising business—jargon in which let’s get down (to) where the rubber meets the road meant how much is it going to cost?.
For more fascinating phrases that first popped up in the world of advertising (“gray flannelisms”), check out the post.
Over at The Phrase Finder, there's a nifty little discussion about this phrase that eventually led me to this Firestone Tire commercial with a catchy little jingle/song that employs where the rubber meets the road in a very literal way.
And with that, I'd better get packing!
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