Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Shooting the breeze

 Confession: I am *stillI* unpacking from the Left Coast Crime conference (these things take time!), and reliving pleasant memories of catching up with folks in person, and just shooting the breeze. 

This phrase, meaning to chat idly or informally, sounds very "Old West" to me. I can imagine a couple of Silver Rush characters, hanging out at a street corner in San Francisco's Barbary Coast or in the fictional Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville, just shooting the breeze. However...

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...according to The Idioms (which claims to be the "largest idiom dictionary... hmmmm), shooting the breeze is of more recent vintage, originating in the U.S. in the early 1900s. As to why "breeze," the entry notes:

A breeze is a light wind, and that’s why the word is used in this phrase to denote a light talk, idle talk, unimportant conversation, or a rumor. ... Sometimes, you can find that “bull” is used instead of “breeze,” but the meaning remains the same. “Shoot the bull” developed from the American institution known as a “bull session,” a gathering of men and it was first recorded in 1908 in prints.

The Online Etymology Dictionary places shoot the breeze even later, at 1938, suggesting it may have originated as military slang. Wiktionary pegs it at 1919, adding that the word breeze alludes to "talking into the wind." Turning to Google Ngram, I tracked down the earliest use of this slang-ish phrase in the 1917 Syllabus of Northwestern University and in the Coopers International Journal of 1918 (which has some awesome photos, if you scroll around through this publication). Of course, it could easily have shown up earlier in newspapers and in speech. Still, I guess I can't have Inez Stannert shooting the breeze in 1879 Leadville or even in 1882 San Francisco...

No, we cannot "shoot the breeze." Come back in 1917 and ask me then.
Image by Prawny from Pixabay.