Interesting Random Facts

The group of names “Tom, Dick, and Harry” signifying any indiscriminate collection of masculine representatives of hoi polloi was a more or less haphazard choice.

It probably started with names common in the sixteenth century.

Thus Sir David Lyndesay, in Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour (c. 1555), has, “Wherefore to colliers, carters and cokes to lack (Jack) and Tom my rime shall be directed.”

And Shakespeare, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588), gives us in the closing song, “And Dicke the Shepheard blowes his nails; and Tom beares Logges into the hall.”

And “Dick, Tom, and Jack” served through the seventeenth century. But our present group was apparently an American selection.

It appeared (according to George L. Kittredge’s The Old Farmer and His Almanac, 1904) in The Farmer’s Almanack for 1815: “So he hired Tom, Dick and Harry, and at it they went.”

The phrase “to put one’s shoulder to the wheel” means: To assist with might and main; to labor vigorously in behalf of a cause, project, etc.

In the physical sense one put one’s shoulder to the wheel to aid his horse in pulling a cart or other vehicle out of the mud or over an obstacle.

And when a horse required such aid, it was certain that vigorous effort was needed. No halfway measures are implied by the expression.

Figurative usage dates back to the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt that the captive Israelites under the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt were often obliged to perform the task literally in the building of the pyramids.

Usually the “something” is an insult or act of scorn, contempt, derision, or the like that we do not take, or intend to take, with the submission implied by recumbency, passively, that is.

In fact, he who does “take it lying down” is likely to be regarded as spineless, or perhaps as a bootlicker, stooge, apple-polisher, or toady.

It is an American expression, perhaps twenty-five or thirty years old.

The phrase “to play ball with one” means: To cooperate with one; to accept as a fellow; also, sometimes to accept as a friend or a confidant.

In its literal sense the expression first alluded to the necessity for each member of a ball team, baseball or football, to cooperate with all other members in all possible ways during any game in order to play most effectively.

From an admonition by the coaches of successful teams, the expression extended into social and commercial usage in the 1920′s.

Just what these spots were, which when knocked off gave one a victory, is a matter of guess.

Apparently they were New England spots, and possibly localized still further in Vermont.

At least the first printed reference leads to the latter inference.

It was in an article on the breeding of Morgan horses in the publication, Porter’s Spirit of the Times, November 22, 1856: “Addison County leads the van (or ‘knocks the spots off,’ as we say here) in Vermont and is celebrated over the world for its fine horses.”

We have a hunch that the “spots” were the prominent members of the countenance of one’s adversary, the eyes, the nose, at which one would be most likely to aim one’s fists.

The phrase “on tick” means: On credit.

Years ago, when this commercial term first came into use, it indicated a written document, a form of IOU.

That is, it was just a contraction of “on ticket,” and the “ticket” was some form of note of hand, or acknowledgment of indebtedness.

The contracted form came into use in the fore part of the seventeenth century.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites a usage of 1642: “They would haue . . run on tick with Piggin for inke and songs, rather than haue lost the show of your presence.”

After long and diligent search for some American of sufficient prominence in a bygone generation to justify the continued use of his name, even to the present time, in such sayings as “to run like Sam Hill,” “What the Sam Hill,” “Who the Sam Hill,” and so on, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that the editors of The Dictionary of Americanisms were right in calling the term “a euphemism for hell.”

It may be, as Edwin V. Mitchell says in his Encyclopedia of American Politics (1946), that there was a Colonel Samuel Hill of Guilford, Connecticut, who continuously ran for and was elected to public office in both town and state, but this colonel, though perhaps locally prominent, does not turn up in any of the numerous biographical records we have consulted.

Nor does Mr. Mitchell supply any dates.

The expression itself had sufficiently widespread usage to extend into Schuyler County, New York, by 1839.

“With the tail between the legs” is Fido for you.

Put him up against a toy terrier half his size and his tail promptly turns down under his belly.

Maybe he’ll even turn on his back, all four legs limp.

Brave dog!

The attitude of a cowardly or scared dog is so typical that we have long said of a thoroughly cowed, utterly abased, or dejected person that he stands or runs “with his tail between his legs.”

The expression “to cut a big swath” was slang, back in the 1840′s.

It alluded to the wide sweep of grass mowed by a scythe; hence, to the flourish made by a pompous person swaggering down the walk.

In fact, the first literary use of this American slang was precisely that.

It was in High Life in New York (1843), by Ann Stephens: “Gracious me! how he was strutting up the side-walk, didn’t he cut a swath!”

The popular creator of the fictional character, Sam Slick, undoubtedly helped perpetuate the phrase.

In Nature and Human Nature (1855), that is, Thomas C. Haliburton had the lines, “The Miss As cut a tall swathe, I tell you, for they say they are descended from a governor of Nova Scotia, and that their relaticins in England are some punkins too.”

The phrase “beside the mark” is very old.

In fact, it is so old that, in the original Greek, it had passed from a proverbial phrase into a single word which expressed its figurative sense.

That is, in the old Athenian contests, an archer who failed to hit the mark was said to be out of the lists or course; hence, beside the mark.

The same thing, though in English, was said of the English bowman, sometimes by variation, “far from the mark,” “wide of the mark,” “short of the mark,” “to miss the mark.”

The Greek single word, which may be represented by roman type as exagonion, had the figurative meaning, “irrelevant; not pertinent,” precisely the meaning we give to the English phrase.