Speaker 1: Yea. It's often said that how do how do you
Speaker 1: say it? A podcast in one hand is worth two
Speaker 1: in the bush or a a. You can take a
Speaker 1: podcast to water, but you can't make it stream. You
Speaker 1: can't teach an old podcast or new tricks or can
Speaker 1: you don't look at gift podcast in the mouth. Uh.
Speaker 1: These may not be the exact verbatim figures of speech
Speaker 1: or turns of phrase, but by gosh, by golly, by gum,
Speaker 1: those things are fascinating nonetheless. Right, yeah, I'm Ben, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Noel and uh and this is ridiculous history. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: we should tell people the name of the show. We
Speaker 1: are a company, of course, as always with our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram give him a hand if you're not driving.
Speaker 1: And this is a very special episode for us. No,
Speaker 1: we are exploring some strange dare I say, ridiculous idioms
Speaker 1: and figures of speech, but we are not embarking on
Speaker 1: this journey alone, my friend. Oh no, we have joined
Speaker 1: forces with a good friend of ours, friend of the show, podcaster, producer, musician,
Speaker 1: just regular you know, all around jack of all trades,
Speaker 1: renaissance man. You can't hear this, but I'm blushing right now,
Speaker 1: really ridiculous historians. Uh, Rowan Nubi, thanks for coming on
Speaker 1: the show man. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Rowan,
Speaker 1: that's your real name, Yeah, it's it's another here. Nor
Speaker 1: There has a fantastic podcast called pitches Um, where a
Speaker 1: very is entertaining comedic people, smart people, funny people come
Speaker 1: on and pitch pretty horrible ideas for products or or
Speaker 1: films or books or really anything that that would require
Speaker 1: a pitch to try and sell. Is that right? I
Speaker 1: couldn't have said it better myself. Terrible ideas right there.
Speaker 1: That's sometimes it's almost scary when we stumble upon a
Speaker 1: good idea because we don't know what to do. There's
Speaker 1: off we're like, oh, no, go you know, let's cut this.
Speaker 1: You quickly copyrighted and we'll save this episode or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rowan was kind enough to have me on as a
Speaker 1: guest of a very early episode of the show UM,
Speaker 1: and we kind of stumbled upon a reality show idea
Speaker 1: for like masked performers, and it was more in the
Speaker 1: DJ space. But then the other day we looked at
Speaker 1: the TV and now there's the masked singer and behold
Speaker 1: parallel thinking at its finest behold the name of the artist.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. It would be with zeros though, yeah, naturally,
Speaker 1: And it's weird how quickly that that idea just evolved. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we're we we explore often
Speaker 1: here on Ridiculous History, will be the strange turns of
Speaker 1: phrases that emerge, especially in English, but in all languages
Speaker 1: over the unending game of telephone that we call history.
Speaker 1: Right there, there's some weird ones. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys have ever seen those great compilation articles about
Speaker 1: phrases in other languages that just don't translate, you know,
Speaker 1: like things that make sense in Turkish, for instance, but
Speaker 1: not English. It turns out that our language has a
Speaker 1: ton of those, and and today we combined our forces
Speaker 1: to explore a few that captivated us, and to do
Speaker 1: our darndst since we're family show, to discover the origin
Speaker 1: behind these phrases. Right, this is the right episode, it is,
Speaker 1: and I think it's actually a repeatable model. I think
Speaker 1: if this goes well, we could maybe do some more
Speaker 1: of these. Um My, your friend, your dear friend Rowan's
Speaker 1: dear friend, Frank um actually came up with a great
Speaker 1: name for the segment or this type of show. We
Speaker 1: could call it Idiomatic for the people, hey like as
Speaker 1: a not to Georgia Boys R A M and their
Speaker 1: seminal album Automatic for the People. I had a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a self deprecating name, which would be
Speaker 1: idiots on idioms. I think you know what. I like
Speaker 1: both of those. I like both of those. I did
Speaker 1: not prepare a name for this segment. For sure, there's
Speaker 1: music and both of them. It's true, there we go.
Speaker 1: But what so we decided to do this episode and
Speaker 1: then we split apart and solo style, gave ourselves some
Speaker 1: homework and one of the one of the conversations we
Speaker 1: had was about whether we should let each other know
Speaker 1: in advance which idioms were bringing in the table, or
Speaker 1: whether we should surprise one another. I think it's a
Speaker 1: mixed bag, right, it's a mixed bags. And I know
Speaker 1: some of them, and then on some of them I
Speaker 1: don't know, and I'm excited for for all of them. Actually,
Speaker 1: without further ado, gentlemen, what do you say, who shall
Speaker 1: be the first to cast their word hat into the
Speaker 1: word ring? Well, Well, Ben, I mean you didn't. You
Speaker 1: didn't let us know any of yours. So I'm kind
Speaker 1: of on the edge of my seat. Do you mind
Speaker 1: going first with one of your choices? Sure? Absolutely. There
Speaker 1: is a phrase that is very common even nowadays, and
Speaker 1: it is something that should be familiar, I think to
Speaker 1: all native English speakers, regardless of the country in which
Speaker 1: you live. It's something ruined that you and I have
Speaker 1: said before in casual conversation. It is to butter someone up.
Speaker 1: Oh stop buttering me up, Noel, You and I have
Speaker 1: used this as well. Yeah, and it always kind of
Speaker 1: weirds me out a little bit because it makes me
Speaker 1: think of, you know, covering someone in delicious spread herble. Butter.
Speaker 1: I mean if your friends with someone who's you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a dinner roll, or your friends with a turkey
Speaker 1: maybe you know, I don't know, based me yeah please,
Speaker 1: it's implying a very intimate form of physical contact. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's strange because we we use this phrase and
Speaker 1: we all know roughly what it means. Flattery, right, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of somewhere between flattery and pandering. Right.
Speaker 1: This is actually an ancient concept. I had no idea
Speaker 1: because a lot of phrases, oddly enough, in English come
Speaker 1: from things like the Bible, or translations of it, or
Speaker 1: they come from wars. However, to butter me up has
Speaker 1: has a couple of different proposed origins, and one of
Speaker 1: the most solid or most widely accepted traces its origins
Speaker 1: back to ancient India, which I did not see coming.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about g here, we're talking about g yes,
Speaker 1: well done, clarified butter clarified g h e E. So
Speaker 1: here's what would happen, guys. The idea is that in
Speaker 1: ancient India, people would lob small balls of butter of
Speaker 1: gee butter at statues of various gods while asking them
Speaker 1: for favors. It's kind of an inducement, the same way
Speaker 1: that in some other religions you would offer a favored
Speaker 1: treat of a god as a tribute, So like cigars
Speaker 1: or alcoholic beverages or uh coins, blood of an infant, food,
Speaker 1: the skull of an enemy or a loved one. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of various So butter is largely
Speaker 1: innocuous in this this idea, and in Tibet there's an
Speaker 1: even older custom of crafting butter sculptures. When the new
Speaker 1: year rolls around, the sculptures are viewed as a way
Speaker 1: of bringing happiness and peace in the coming year. So
Speaker 1: when we say that we're buttering someone up, we are
Speaker 1: implying that either they were making them a statue every year,
Speaker 1: or that we are giving them an offering in a
Speaker 1: transactional way because we want their favor. So the meaning
Speaker 1: of the meaning of this has become less blatant over time,
Speaker 1: and now it just means being nice to someone. But
Speaker 1: still I would argue with a soft implication, soft and
Speaker 1: buttering that there is something expected in return. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's like paying tribute, right, I mean, because also I
Speaker 1: would imagine we've done episodes in the past about how
Speaker 1: butter was a very hot commodity, right Yeah, Marjarine versus
Speaker 1: Butter was a big thing too, but I think you're
Speaker 1: talking about an older period of time, right. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was also the one about the Protestant Reformation about how
Speaker 1: those butter indulgences were such a thing because it really
Speaker 1: pointed to the fact that, you know, the powers that
Speaker 1: be didn't actually care about good works and being pious.
Speaker 1: It was more just a way of like depriving people
Speaker 1: of things and giving the rich what they wanted as
Speaker 1: long as they could pay for it. So it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting that it's butter has always been kind of a
Speaker 1: divisive and tasty treat, even as recently. He's the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies right, because there was the law about how margarine
Speaker 1: had to be dyed pink so that people would know
Speaker 1: it was not true butter that. I think Wisconsin was
Speaker 1: one of the last holdouts for that. But yes, that's it.
Speaker 1: So butter me up the next time you want to
Speaker 1: be one of those actually people in a conversation at
Speaker 1: a cocktail party or a suaree of your choosing. Uh,
Speaker 1: come armed with that information and butter someone up by saying,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you already know the etymology of tow
Speaker 1: butter someone up. But here it is, who would ever
Speaker 1: do that? Nobody listens to the show or anyone sitting
Speaker 1: in this room would ever do it? Actually would you? Anyone? Butters?
Speaker 1: What now? And actually you would never go like, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't do it on purpose. I've been
Speaker 1: accused of doing the glasses up the nose thing, but
Speaker 1: it's always with a you take it with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt's or us slap at a ball of butter,
Speaker 1: ball of butter, you know, I think it's interest thing though,
Speaker 1: that you're really leaning into it being a mostly nice thing.
Speaker 1: I take buttering someone up as definitely wanting something and
Speaker 1: as manipulative. Kind of buttering someone up I always just
Speaker 1: read as like, because when someone's like, why are you
Speaker 1: buttering me up? You know that tone complicates? That's right, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of whiz or this is not when I was.
Speaker 1: I don't believe this is when we today. But it's
Speaker 1: sort of akin to blowing smoke up someone's back, which
Speaker 1: I wonder, since we can speculate on that one, I
Speaker 1: wonder whether that has anything to do with uh Kellogg
Speaker 1: and his overwhelming love of what he thought were medicinal enimals,
Speaker 1: including tobacco smoke. Is that right? Oh? Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: all about enemas, and I knew he was about animals,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know that as smoke was was in
Speaker 1: the equation tobacco water. Weird true, and him of the state.
Speaker 1: There we go, So what's what's next. We've cracked the
Speaker 1: case on buttering someone up? Well, I had one question. Yes,
Speaker 1: they make so you're saying they made statues in India
Speaker 1: of Tibet, Yes, brother of their gods. I'm just searching
Speaker 1: for a gey nsh joke somewhere in there. I guess
Speaker 1: that's you found your way to really sorry for this
Speaker 1: is what kind of We have been accused of absolute
Speaker 1: dependence on dad jokes, So it's totally totally part I
Speaker 1: have come to the right place. Yes, welcome home. Uh
Speaker 1: we have. I would say we have been lauded for
Speaker 1: the our attempts at um potato potato My friends, are
Speaker 1: you saying that you get um like listeners writing YouTube
Speaker 1: comments being like, guys, enough with the dead jokes? Okay,
Speaker 1: well not on YouTube, but on iTunes. It is a
Speaker 1: terrible place. Don't ever go. Don't ever read the iTunes.
Speaker 1: I get more emails and tweets and stuff like. Uh,
Speaker 1: life was hopeless until you guys did that run of puns.
Speaker 1: Thank you. There's there's a light at the end of
Speaker 1: the tunnel. Famous pun run. Oh I heard about that
Speaker 1: for charity for two thousand and twelve. Famous pun run. Yes,
Speaker 1: classic things will never be how you guys had no idea?
Speaker 1: Well we had Luchador mask on. Oh, it's part of it.
Speaker 1: That's sexy. Well it seems like a good idea of time,
Speaker 1: and now it's tradition, and we're bound by that. We
Speaker 1: are nothing if not fans of tradition. So same. So
Speaker 1: what what's next? What's next? I don't know who wants
Speaker 1: to go next? You want to go next to her? Ubi? Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 1: The first one I'm going to talk about is nippet
Speaker 1: in the bud, nip it in the button. Come on, folks,
Speaker 1: we know what that means, or if we don't, we
Speaker 1: at least have used it and thought that makes sense. Technically,
Speaker 1: it's a horticultural metaphor, alluding to put it in a
Speaker 1: stop to something uh, in its early stages, before it
Speaker 1: becomes um you know negative it grows out of and
Speaker 1: matask the size and takes over your entire garden. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's derived from like the budding of plants and
Speaker 1: the whole horticulture thing because you cut the top then
Speaker 1: you can't grow into a beautiful fruit, that's right. So
Speaker 1: when you say it, it sounds to me like whenever
Speaker 1: people use that, it's almost like a bit of a
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek way of trying to sound Southern, kind
Speaker 1: of like it just nippet in the button. It is.
Speaker 1: I feel very particularly southern. Actually, I remember first hearing
Speaker 1: it um from Barney five and you know and the
Speaker 1: Griffin the show. That's that's strange because I would also assume,
Speaker 1: if I'm overthinking this, that in the original hortic cultural sense,
Speaker 1: it's still it doesn't kill the plant, the roots. Still,
Speaker 1: it does not kill the planet, just stops it before
Speaker 1: it can reach it, you know, flowery climax. Okay, So
Speaker 1: somebody is, for instance, say, uh, collecting way too many
Speaker 1: what what's a weird thing for someone to collect tales? Tales?
Speaker 1: They're collecting too many tales. T A I C A
Speaker 1: I L s. Okay, they're collected too many tales and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, fourteen is enough. It's getting weird. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna nip it in the bud. But that means they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to get rid of the other fourteen.
Speaker 1: That's they're just nipping their weird tail collection in the
Speaker 1: bud before people start calling that person, you know, the
Speaker 1: tail freak of of Cincinnati. Now it's interesting, there's actually
Speaker 1: even another version of this that is nipp it in
Speaker 1: the bloom um and it was first cited in a
Speaker 1: work by Henry Chettel in a book called a Romance
Speaker 1: book called Piers Plans seven years Apprenticeship. I'm guessing that's
Speaker 1: Old English. It's p I e r S p l A.
Speaker 1: I almost sounded French for a second, but then it's
Speaker 1: got years spelled y E r e s, which is
Speaker 1: very Canterbury tails if you ask me. And that's from
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite add up to Old English, though, does it, guys.
Speaker 1: I also found that this is one of those idioms
Speaker 1: that people tend to mispronounce or misunderstand. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people listen, Oh, I already know what do
Speaker 1: they think it is? They think it's nippet in the butt?
Speaker 1: Were going to say, yes, you're correct, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: What would what would nip it in the butt mean?
Speaker 1: Does it? What would that mean? Do you give it
Speaker 1: a little bite, a little tweak, yeah, a little love bite? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: So so I was actually wrong. It turns out Chettle
Speaker 1: was actually a contemporary of Christopher Marlowe, who was like
Speaker 1: a contemporary of William Shakespeare. So the Old English talk
Speaker 1: kind of that that does hold true, but I believe
Speaker 1: the Cannabary Tales were a little earlier than that. But
Speaker 1: it does feel like right in that in line with that,
Speaker 1: and that's where it first came from. Um, which is
Speaker 1: I didn't know either. But I'm just I'm just googling
Speaker 1: away right now as we talked about this, because you
Speaker 1: have you got mom, I literally I literally didn't take
Speaker 1: that note because I couldn't pronounce any of those words.
Speaker 1: Just so you know, I also found that a well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, though, I just want you to to
Speaker 1: be very comfortable. A big part of this show is
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't try that hard to pronounce
Speaker 1: things correctly other than wonderful yes, because we do have
Speaker 1: We don't want to be vague about this. We want
Speaker 1: to be specific. We we have a francophone and our
Speaker 1: super producers. So he will he will handle a lot
Speaker 1: of the French wars. It's also because of the French
Speaker 1: are the most judge. Well occasionally, it's because occasionally he'll
Speaker 1: do it with some reluctance because we have just spraying
Speaker 1: it on him and said, hey, Casey, here's a paragraph
Speaker 1: of French. Could you just translate this for us? But he,
Speaker 1: you know, he he understands the game and he is
Speaker 1: he has taken to it over time, and now he
Speaker 1: doesn't even make a face anymore when we asked him
Speaker 1: to help us pronounce a face on the inside. As
Speaker 1: long as he is, he is a champion among that.
Speaker 1: I also feel like it's largely about um, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: totally right, like getting rid of the early stages of
Speaker 1: something so hasn't become something worse. But usually it's about
Speaker 1: a problem, right, or it's about like a person. It's like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna nip this in the bug. We're gonna like
Speaker 1: sort out this disagreement now before it gets out of
Speaker 1: control and everything gets blown out of proportion. That seems
Speaker 1: to be the way that I'm familiar with it being.
Speaker 1: Now now I'm increasingly a fan, and thank you for
Speaker 1: this rowin of uh nippt in the butt. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna see, you've just been sitting over there. How long
Speaker 1: I can pull that off in normal conversation? Sure, someone
Speaker 1: they do, they do, and the glasses and they go, actually,
Speaker 1: it's the butt. And I learned that from Rowan New
Speaker 1: Beyond Ridiculous History. And I'll say, you know, I I
Speaker 1: co founded and host that show, and then and they'll
Speaker 1: say who are you? And I will, naturally, of course,
Speaker 1: as I always do it in airport say my name
Speaker 1: is Casey pegrum and the wage mayham across the terminal,
Speaker 1: but um, well, nipping it in the butt aside. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is I think this is Uh. I'm been learning
Speaker 1: a lot. I don't know about you guys. Know it's
Speaker 1: every day is a shiny new penny, as our our
Speaker 1: cohort Holly Fry likes to say, and every day is
Speaker 1: a winding road, as Cheryl Crow once said. It's true
Speaker 1: only once though. Wow, I don't know that that song
Speaker 1: was was pretty hot? No, I mean she did it
Speaker 1: in one tick? Do you think so? No? Is that true?
Speaker 1: This is also as lies about Cheryl Crow podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: watch out, she listens to this show regular She is
Speaker 1: also notoriously retigious, incredibly touchy, sorry, and pedantic. Cheryl, I,
Speaker 1: I'm just rasing you. I'm a snipping you in the butt. Okay.
Speaker 1: All of our itune interviews that are not favorable are
Speaker 1: in fact written by Cheryl Crow. Yeah. She has like
Speaker 1: a clip farm, like in somewhere in you know, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: or it's just like fifty young children just writing mean
Speaker 1: reviews about ridiculous history. It's where most of her royalties
Speaker 1: have gone. She's put a lot of time into you
Speaker 1: have to do some Most of your streams too, are
Speaker 1: from her click farm. Yes, gosh, but you know you've
Speaker 1: made it when you have like a true nemesis. And
Speaker 1: what better nemesis to have than multi Grammy award winning
Speaker 1: artist like CHERRYL. Crow. Yeah, you guys, you made it.
Speaker 1: Yeah it Actually we were all holding hands right now,
Speaker 1: by the way, and we it might sound like we're joking,
Speaker 1: but I want to be completely sincere. I would like
Speaker 1: to confess something about my personal life. As a child,
Speaker 1: I had a dream, a recurring dream, where the violinist
Speaker 1: of Dave Matthews Band hated me somehow knew who I
Speaker 1: was and despised me. And eventually I thought, maybe that's
Speaker 1: maybe that's correct, maybe not just like I didn't think
Speaker 1: specifically of a nemesis, but I thought, man, it would
Speaker 1: be amazing if I had a celebrity, not not a huge,
Speaker 1: huge celebrity, but who was a celebrity justknew me and
Speaker 1: intensely and publicly didn't care for my whole But how
Speaker 1: did this manifest use? Did he swat you with his bow?
Speaker 1: In uh? In the dream, which was a recurring dream, again,
Speaker 1: I would go to a concert, a Dave Matthews concerts
Speaker 1: when they were pretty bad. You knew it was a
Speaker 1: dream because you never go to a Dave Matthews concert.
Speaker 1: Some dream logic there, my friends, and I was. I
Speaker 1: was in the I was in the concert. I was
Speaker 1: inevitably on a date of the person I was dating
Speaker 1: would change because I had this dream over a number
Speaker 1: of years. And then at some point in the concert,
Speaker 1: when they paused between songs, the violinist of Dave Matthews
Speaker 1: group would come up and say, I know Ben Bullen
Speaker 1: is in the crowd tonight and say horrible, horrible stuff
Speaker 1: about me. This is a true story. And I used
Speaker 1: to think it meant that I was destined to go
Speaker 1: to a Dave Matthews concert. But I have not done,
Speaker 1: so I have an alternate theory. Um. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I inexplicably no that the violin for Dave Matthews band's
Speaker 1: name is Boyd Tinsley. Um and he passed away? Did
Speaker 1: he did pass? Well? You know, I think he actually
Speaker 1: just got kicked out of the band because it turns
Speaker 1: out he was not a good guy. I think he
Speaker 1: was accused of some some sexual harassment and um, and
Speaker 1: he got fired. Oh man, I might, in some incredibly
Speaker 1: useless way be capable of precognitive dreams. Possible. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that that boyd Tinsley of the Dave of Matthews
Speaker 1: band represented your inner insecurity has been and it manifested
Speaker 1: itself plus front of God and everyone and and and
Speaker 1: you had to contend with that night after night after
Speaker 1: night like some kind of fresh personal Hell yeah. Plus
Speaker 1: you went on. You were saying it was always dates
Speaker 1: and that the girl changed every time. It's probably because
Speaker 1: you were taking her to Dave Matthews comin. I never
Speaker 1: saw you again? What are you doing? Uh? For the record,
Speaker 1: I believe it was Leroy Moore who actually passed away.
Speaker 1: And the clarinetis so so back to the subject of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Thank you for joining me on that strange
Speaker 1: dream journey. Guys, I hope I don't have that dream again.
Speaker 1: Where how long has it been? It has been at
Speaker 1: least at least a decade. Then you're cured. We say
Speaker 1: that now there's a there's really only two outcomes here.
Speaker 1: One that you start having that dream again horribly in abundance,
Speaker 1: or you never have it again because you've finally gotten
Speaker 1: this off your chest and now you're you're safe. It
Speaker 1: would be the modern day equivalent of the violinist for
Speaker 1: Dave Matthews band. I know they're still around, but would
Speaker 1: it be John Mayor of Dave Matthews back there you go,
Speaker 1: or anybody in cold Play aside from the main guy.
Speaker 1: Are you saying like the equivalent meaning another violinist, another
Speaker 1: sort of ancillary player in like a very like contemporary giant,
Speaker 1: uber popular jam band who might possibly start appearing in
Speaker 1: Ben's dreams and talking smack dawn. We may have cursed,
Speaker 1: we may have cursed me. It may just be ERRYL. Crow.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say the guitarist for like Rage Against
Speaker 1: the Machine or Slash, you know, one of those um
Speaker 1: like vice presidents of the bands essentially were there as
Speaker 1: famous but not really, you know, just all of them
Speaker 1: will meet you like uh at the dinner table, will
Speaker 1: be Slash, Keith Richards. You know, well it's not you, guys.
Speaker 1: I will carry We will have your back, sir, We
Speaker 1: will we will fight off this horde of trash talk
Speaker 1: dream villains, weird bad band dream villains. But hey, we
Speaker 1: should probably nip this in the but and here from
Speaker 1: no is it my turn my turn pretty good. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. It was absolutely proper use of
Speaker 1: that expression. And now I learned we actually no, no
Speaker 1: a little bit more about where it comes from. So, um,
Speaker 1: here's mine. The funny thing about a lot of these
Speaker 1: phrases is out of context. Like you you get so
Speaker 1: used to hearing them that you never even think about
Speaker 1: what the words even really mean. Right, I think that's
Speaker 1: a big part of this. So for me it was
Speaker 1: basket case, right, So I we all know how basket
Speaker 1: case is uses referring to someone that doesn't have their
Speaker 1: their life together or that it's like having a crisis
Speaker 1: or whatever he's saying, or you can say it about yourself.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, I'm such a basket case today. I'm
Speaker 1: just nothing's going right for me, disorganized. But more specifically,
Speaker 1: it's like more of having like a bit of a
Speaker 1: mental health break down. I think we can all remember
Speaker 1: the the seminal. I've been using that word a lot
Speaker 1: in this episode today, but I'm gonna keep rolling with it.
Speaker 1: Um nineteen nineties Green Day song basket Case, where he
Speaker 1: talks about how you know, he gives himself the creeps
Speaker 1: his mind plays tricks on him. He's cracking up. He
Speaker 1: thinks he's had enough. He's paranoid, or he might just
Speaker 1: be stoned. Um, but he's having a hard time, Billy
Speaker 1: Joe Armstrong in his faux British accent, he's having a
Speaker 1: really hard times. He has just yeah, he really has.
Speaker 1: So here's the problem that I had when I started
Speaker 1: really thinking about before doing the research about basket case.
Speaker 1: I think of the word case, and I think of
Speaker 1: it as like a like a suitcase. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: but isn't a basket already a case for things? It's
Speaker 1: sort of a wicker case, right, it's a basket, it's
Speaker 1: kind of machine. So when I thought it's it's a
Speaker 1: little redundant. But so I thought, maybe it just meant
Speaker 1: a useless thing or a redundant, silly, ridiculous thing, like
Speaker 1: he needs a case for a basket. A baskets already
Speaker 1: its own case, like having a bag for a bag.
Speaker 1: It's a waste. It turns out nothing to do with
Speaker 1: any of that, Absolutely nothing to do with any of that. Um.
Speaker 1: The origins of the term basket case date back to
Speaker 1: UH nineteen nineteen during World War One, and it was
Speaker 1: um a term that was used to describe a particularly
Speaker 1: brutal type of wound or series of wounds experienced by soldiers,
Speaker 1: the the dreaded quadruple amputation, the quadruple amputation. So you've
Speaker 1: lost your arms and your legs and are therefore in
Speaker 1: need of being carried around in a basket. Therefore, you
Speaker 1: are a basket case. Um. And it of course is
Speaker 1: morphed over time, and we'll get to that. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. It actually has been consistently um denied by
Speaker 1: army officials that there ever were any basket cases. So
Speaker 1: here's here's here's the thing in World War One. Well,
Speaker 1: and it goes on. So the Surgeon General of the
Speaker 1: Army um uh. In nineteen nineteen, the United States Surgeon
Speaker 1: General said that there were no foundation for any of
Speaker 1: the stories, um that have been circulated, because this term
Speaker 1: kind of had been making the rounds. And he uses
Speaker 1: the term basket case to describe a thing that he
Speaker 1: says doesn't exist. So he acknowledges the term in its existence.
Speaker 1: But he says, but there there are no such cases
Speaker 1: as as would be required to be carried in baskets. Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: it's a paradox. It's a bit of a paradox. But
Speaker 1: then you know, we've got World War Two and the
Speaker 1: term kind of stuck around in the zeitgeist. And yet
Speaker 1: again Surgeon General in nineteen forty four says, quote, there
Speaker 1: is nothing to rumors of so called basket cases and
Speaker 1: then goes on to say cases of men with both
Speaker 1: arms and legs amputated. Um. So here's the interesting part.
Speaker 1: Apparently there was a case of a Canadian soldier that
Speaker 1: is pretty well documented who did experience quadruple amputations, but
Speaker 1: he actually went on to lead a very productive life,
Speaker 1: and he was fitted with prosthetic legs and even um
Speaker 1: had a prosthetic arm um fitted to him that allowed
Speaker 1: him to be able to write and lived a very
Speaker 1: normal and productive life. And this comes from a fantastic
Speaker 1: article on grammar phobia dot com that refers to the
Speaker 1: basket case myth um. So obviously the term evolved over
Speaker 1: time and became much more of an expression referring to
Speaker 1: mental health and someone who, as we say at the top,
Speaker 1: it's experiencing trauma or anxiety or you know, having some
Speaker 1: kind of breakdown. Right. So, after World War Two, the
Speaker 1: term stop being used to refer to these kind of
Speaker 1: imaginary basket cases, because there was really no proof of
Speaker 1: them ever having existed. But considering I don't know, Ben,
Speaker 1: you're you're a bit of a war historian yourself in
Speaker 1: terms of your interests, can't you imagine that there must
Speaker 1: have been at least a handful of cases where someone
Speaker 1: had been injured so badly by explosions that they may
Speaker 1: have had to have and it doesn't seem a little fishy.
Speaker 1: This official line was like, this never happened. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the grizzly thing. It probably did happen, but people's odds
Speaker 1: of surviving much lower. That's right, that's why the Canadian
Speaker 1: case was noteworthy. That's a good point. But that's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary story, man, Yeah it is. And then then somehow
Speaker 1: it just kind of like things do um evolved to
Speaker 1: a completely different meaning entirely because of the fact that
Speaker 1: these cases didn't exist, But the term was still floating around,
Speaker 1: and that zite guys people kind of start it, adapting
Speaker 1: it and referring to people that didn't have their act together.
Speaker 1: But then it's still it's still used today. And the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is, obviously is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: in poor taste kind of term. No matter how you
Speaker 1: use it, it's a pejorative, especially if you're talking about
Speaker 1: any person with a disability, and then when you apply
Speaker 1: it to somebody that's having trouble psychologically, that's also not
Speaker 1: very nice. So it's actually become more instyled to use
Speaker 1: it to refer to things and nations as opposed to people.
Speaker 1: And there's a really interesting article in the Guardian, Um
Speaker 1: I think it was a letter to the editor and
Speaker 1: it's called basket case the case against and it talks
Speaker 1: about how it is just lazy writing, um, and it
Speaker 1: should not be used and that then it goes in
Speaker 1: sights how often it is used. So apparently, Um, the
Speaker 1: Sun in the UK thinks that Greece, Zimbabwe and Spain
Speaker 1: are basket cases and that Prince William could have been one,
Speaker 1: but then he married Kate Middleton's so now he's he's okay,
Speaker 1: he's not a basket case. Um. And then you've got
Speaker 1: the Times that believes grease in Argentina are basque cases.
Speaker 1: Africa once was, but now isn't. They now refer to
Speaker 1: it as a bread basket. And then um, they also
Speaker 1: talk about particular governments that are basket cases. Companies to
Speaker 1: companies that are basket cases. Um, and this this writer
Speaker 1: makes the case that it's just bad writing and then
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any metaphorical power anymore, and to just
Speaker 1: let it go. And I would be inclined to agree
Speaker 1: in some aspect. They got that from George Orwell's Rules
Speaker 1: of writing. He is the guy who famously said, never
Speaker 1: use an idiom figure speech or phrase that you are
Speaker 1: used to seeing in print. And uh, he broke that
Speaker 1: rule often, just by the way. And this this commentary
Speaker 1: was by a writer named David marsh Um and Ben.
Speaker 1: As you said at the top of the podcast, war
Speaker 1: often brings new idioms into circulation. And it makes sense
Speaker 1: because you have people of different ethnicities mixing under times
Speaker 1: of great duress, and you've got a lot of like
Speaker 1: kind of phrases that co mingle and take on new
Speaker 1: meaning and get adopted, you know, by different cultures. And Um,
Speaker 1: I think we had a couple that we want to
Speaker 1: just throw out real quick. Yeah, sure, sure. There's for instance,
Speaker 1: boom docks, which now was meant to indicate a place
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, right. The boon docks originally
Speaker 1: was a phrase in Tagalic in the Philippines and it
Speaker 1: just been mountain or there's uh, it's another one, pip squeak, right,
Speaker 1: that's one pip squeaks. An interesting one because that was
Speaker 1: actually a very particular type of small German gun that
Speaker 1: was used in trench warfare during World War One, and
Speaker 1: then you have steaking of trench warfare. The trench coat
Speaker 1: was very specifically one a garment that was worn originally
Speaker 1: in trench warfare, so that was a thing they didn't
Speaker 1: have a name for, and then they called it a
Speaker 1: trench coat. Interesting. I mean, you call pip squeaks, Uh,
Speaker 1: you refer to someone as a pip squeak if they're
Speaker 1: kind of just a nerdy, precocious kid now or in
Speaker 1: any way diminutive and not worthy of your respect. Right. Sure.
Speaker 1: That reminded me of another one. Fleabag actually, as in
Speaker 1: like a fleabag hotel. Oh I missed that phrase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first to uh, grimy and just unsuitable sleeping arrangements. You know,
Speaker 1: the word comes from slang actually used by soldiers in
Speaker 1: the trenches referring to their sleeping bags. So that would
Speaker 1: have often been absolutely infested with fleas under these horrible conditions.
Speaker 1: So you know, from awful circumstances sometimes come fun idioms, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and funds fun idioms idioms. Actually, we have tintenabulated that one, right, uh,
Speaker 1: speaking of downtown Abbey did what did you say? Intenabulated?
Speaker 1: So tintinabulation is one of my favorite examples of how
Speaker 1: you can simply create a word out of more or
Speaker 1: less whole cloth and believe. It was Edgar Allum Poe
Speaker 1: who used who coined the term tintinabulation to mean the
Speaker 1: sound of bells ringing. Whoa, yeah, just the sound of
Speaker 1: ringing bells or the sound after a bell has been rung.
Speaker 1: He just made it up. He just styled on it,
Speaker 1: or as we've said before on this show, he curtified it.
Speaker 1: This idea of bags fleabags, it's an excellent segue. I have.
Speaker 1: I have one that will be familiar to you Knowlan,
Speaker 1: to you Casey, and perhaps to you long time ridiculous
Speaker 1: historians or fans of other shows. It is the phrase
Speaker 1: to let the cat out of the bag or the
Speaker 1: badger classic yes, yes, or in our case the badger. So,
Speaker 1: going back to what you said earlier, know about how
Speaker 1: it's strange that certain phrases can just feel normal because
Speaker 1: of the context in which they occur. Let the cat
Speaker 1: out of the bag is something that everyone who speaks
Speaker 1: English typically understands. Right to reveal a secret of some sort, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes an unpleasant truth, sometimes a pleasant surprise. But when
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's really strange, Like when's the
Speaker 1: last time you walked around with a cat in a bag?
Speaker 1: Or someone was like, hey, will you hold this bag
Speaker 1: for me? To be careful? It has a kid full
Speaker 1: of cats of cats, There's no time to explain. It
Speaker 1: feels like a very old person, bad habit you. It
Speaker 1: might stand from like a granny who was going through
Speaker 1: serious episode of dementia and uh had a poter kiddy
Speaker 1: cat in a bag, or simply refused to pay for
Speaker 1: one of those cat carriers, right, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to pay for it, wastefars. I got this perfectly good bag,
Speaker 1: I tend to h I tend to picture the bag
Speaker 1: is being a pillow case and the act being much
Speaker 1: more of like I'm hunting cats and I'm going to
Speaker 1: put the cat in the bag and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit the bag and drowning kittens or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come mo style not good. Well, luckily it's quite possibly
Speaker 1: not that dark. I have to take quite possibly. So
Speaker 1: the first recorded use of this frame, it's positive the
Speaker 1: cat got out of the bag. There we go. The
Speaker 1: first recorded use of it comes from this book review
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty in London magazine and the reviewer is
Speaker 1: complaining about this book that they've read, and they say,
Speaker 1: we could have wished that the author had not let
Speaker 1: the cat out of the bag. And so in this
Speaker 1: context it seems like it still as a present day meaning,
Speaker 1: which is that the author not spoiled a surprise or
Speaker 1: secret in the book. But this was used other times
Speaker 1: in print, and there are a few origin stories about
Speaker 1: how it came about. I'll give you, guys the first
Speaker 1: one and then tell you why I think it makes
Speaker 1: no sense. Uh So, the first one is this idea
Speaker 1: that goes all the way back to open air markets
Speaker 1: in Britain and the concept of unscrupulous tradesmen or con artist.
Speaker 1: The thing is that they would trade livestock right including pigs,
Speaker 1: which were a big deal at the time, and people
Speaker 1: would sometimes sell piglets in bags, or is the expression
Speaker 1: goes pigs in a poke poke would be another rover bag,
Speaker 1: not a blanket, not I don't blanket, they didn't get
Speaker 1: and as delicious, not well, you know, teach their own.
Speaker 1: But that's a corn dog. Actually yeah, I'm sorry, going, no,
Speaker 1: that's great. Is that really a term? Man? It is
Speaker 1: as a right now alright, tend to nebulate it. So
Speaker 1: the idiom that's related to is when a pig has
Speaker 1: offered open the poke, meaning that one should always check
Speaker 1: and inspect what you have before you leave, after you
Speaker 1: buy it. Don't buy some mystery thing in a bag
Speaker 1: just because someone told you what it was. That concept
Speaker 1: or figure speech dates back to at least the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: Forgot where an audio podcast? So everybody, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: feutally gesturing with my thumb over my right shoulder for
Speaker 1: some reason. That's where the SI audible. So we can
Speaker 1: picture it now here we go. You can throw in
Speaker 1: some sound effects too. You've saved the show. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that these con artists would instead of giving
Speaker 1: somebody a piglet sold in a bag, they would capture
Speaker 1: and sell a much less valuable feral cat. This was
Speaker 1: a profitable practice for the con artist, but either way,
Speaker 1: the moment of the revelation. The origin of the phrase
Speaker 1: in this story is uh that someone would get home
Speaker 1: and they would open the bag, and this we can
Speaker 1: only imagine incredibly irritated cat would burst forth and re havoc,
Speaker 1: you know, become an agent of chaos. But this doesn't
Speaker 1: really make because even the largest cat is gonna weigh
Speaker 1: less than a pig, right, true, right, like a I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert piglet handler. It's not in my skill
Speaker 1: set yet. Your cats are pretty big, they're almost piglets sized, think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're sort of luxurious, furry, soft piglets. Yeah. Hey, and
Speaker 1: I've seen some emaciated pigs out there too. So maybe
Speaker 1: there's a n there's a sweet spot, there's a ven
Speaker 1: diagram here, or maybe they made it a pig and
Speaker 1: a cat. I'm just gonna leave it at that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that rhymes. That was very doctor. That made it a
Speaker 1: pig and a cat, and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Effects So there's but there's the thing, all right, So
Speaker 1: this doesn't really make sense because additionally, pigs and cats
Speaker 1: make audibly different noises. We can only assume that they
Speaker 1: would probably not be chilling in a bag, so we
Speaker 1: would hear some squeeze, some inks, et cetera, and we
Speaker 1: hear some loud hisses and meal and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that seems easy to differentiate. But there's the other idea
Speaker 1: that it comes from a Spanish phrase, the Spanish equivalent
Speaker 1: uh got por libre to give a cap for a hair,
Speaker 1: because rabbits, sorry, h a r eat. Rabbits are commonly
Speaker 1: eaten during the fourteen fifteenth century, cat and a rabbit
Speaker 1: are most size, and it seems more plausible to pull
Speaker 1: the switchery this way. But the third theory is that
Speaker 1: sailors would get in trouble in the Royal Navy and
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy would keep them in line with a
Speaker 1: coda a cat of nine tails, and that this was
Speaker 1: originally kept in a red sack that people could that
Speaker 1: everybody was aware of, you know, kind of a warning
Speaker 1: hanging out in public view. And then when someone is
Speaker 1: going to be punished, the captain would order that they'd
Speaker 1: be trotted out. Everybody in the ship has to join
Speaker 1: on deck and then boom outcomes the red cloth bag
Speaker 1: and then boom ou the cat of nine tails and
Speaker 1: then shrinse and repeat. So that's a little more grizzly.
Speaker 1: I'm also miming taking out at nails in a fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, Ben, because they both imply a negative thing
Speaker 1: being released that can wreak some havoc when it's let
Speaker 1: out into the world and one so they both kind
Speaker 1: of hold true. I have one quick question, Ben, you
Speaker 1: talked about the original let the Pig out of the
Speaker 1: poke or whatever, was about examining a purchase you're going
Speaker 1: to make and how it would be smart to do that.
Speaker 1: I think I know where you're going. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite of looking a gift horse in the mouth, right,
Speaker 1: because that's impolite. If you're like examining a horse's teeth
Speaker 1: that was given to you as a gift, that's a
Speaker 1: no no, even though it would be prudent. Maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: even if a horse is a lot of responsibility, even
Speaker 1: if it was a gift, I would want to make
Speaker 1: sure I wasn't getting some kind of trash, you know,
Speaker 1: diseased horse. Yeah, I want a horse that goes to
Speaker 1: the dentist. Well, you can tell the age of the
Speaker 1: wars its teeth is one of the one of the factors,
Speaker 1: or just I don't want to sickly horse because they
Speaker 1: don't have to dispose of the horse. I might get
Speaker 1: close to the horse and become its pal to go
Speaker 1: on adventures, and then all of a sudden the horse
Speaker 1: drops dead, and then I'm left sad and alone the horse.
Speaker 1: I want to take a stick my head all the
Speaker 1: way in that mouth, so that that was it, and
Speaker 1: not to kick a dead horse if you will, Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean if he was given away horses,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I want to be at that point
Speaker 1: in my life where someone's like, hey man, I have
Speaker 1: this horse and I thought of you. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I would do with it, but it would definitely
Speaker 1: be a well wow, thanks you do you also give
Speaker 1: me a farm? Like it's like somebody giving you, like,
Speaker 1: here's a field for you to cultivate a farm and
Speaker 1: take care of and water. It's an obligations. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's the whole new career. Yeah. The last thing about
Speaker 1: this cat and the bag medium once you guys can
Speaker 1: tell it went on a little bit of rabbit hole
Speaker 1: on is the idea that it is a thing that
Speaker 1: cannot be reversed. It is very difficult to get that
Speaker 1: cat back in the bag, right, it's a Pandora's boxer,
Speaker 1: Pandora's jar situation, Pandora's bag, Pandora's bag, thank you, Pandora's
Speaker 1: basket past. So now oh we are now we are
Speaker 1: armed with that, and I'm liking the I think it
Speaker 1: took us in a weird animal direction. But I was
Speaker 1: just captivated because I really wanted to know if there
Speaker 1: had ever been, you know, some prominent myth or some
Speaker 1: real life historical occurrence wherein someone was like, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: I've got this bag. I think there's a cat in
Speaker 1: it there with me. It's exactly well, what kind of
Speaker 1: was I guess? Cat out of the bag? Everybody you
Speaker 1: heard it here? First was the o G spoiler learnt U. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the cool way of saying it now, but that's
Speaker 1: out of the bag. No one likes to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you ruin the ending of six cents
Speaker 1: cats all right, grandpa? More like the plots out of
Speaker 1: the bag. Yeah, because that, guys, Bruce willis the whole time,
Speaker 1: It's always he was Haley Joe Osmond Ember as well
Speaker 1: as the whole time. I just gotta say it. I
Speaker 1: saw an episode of Future Man. You guys, know that
Speaker 1: what I thought you heard us about to ruin the
Speaker 1: ending of sixth Cents, I just gotta say that, I
Speaker 1: think that's past. The statute of limitationished this and other shows.
Speaker 1: But still it's just wait, what were you going to say? Well,
Speaker 1: Eli Joel Osmond is still acting. He was in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: He looks very, very different. He looks he's a very
Speaker 1: um and I don't mean this in disrespectful ways. He
Speaker 1: still has the same facial features in the same arrangement,
Speaker 1: but he's he's pretty big, but the face is just
Speaker 1: kind of dropped in the middle of his head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I think he's really funny and and I really
Speaker 1: a great guy. He's on Comedy Bang Bang a lot,
Speaker 1: and he was on the Comedy Bank Bang TV show,
Speaker 1: and they kind of played into that slightly odd look
Speaker 1: because he plays a character called slow Joey. So I'm
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't that wasn't my idea, but you know,
Speaker 1: he definitely has a sense of humor and absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean like him on Silicon Valley is a similar kind
Speaker 1: of you know, hair brained character. Is he also kind
Speaker 1: of a weird back in alien kind of debauched weird
Speaker 1: Hollywood executie type guy who was always drugging and boozing
Speaker 1: and womanizing. Did I make that up? Um? It's kind of.
Speaker 1: He seems more like dopey and brought out of bush tail,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the other guy who's like that, who's like,
Speaker 1: really maniacal. I think characters characters. Well, yeah, Haley, Joe,
Speaker 1: if you if you're listening, is he on Future Man?
Speaker 1: Is that Future Man? H he is without spoiling thing.
Speaker 1: He's also unhinged in Future Man. I was just watching
Speaker 1: a surprise because he didn't believe it was him at first.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. You know, it's worth your time.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's I'll watch it in the Future Man.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll let the cat out of the back
Speaker 1: rowan newby. What else do you have for us? Hey?
Speaker 1: You know both of you two. I like the cut
Speaker 1: of y'all's jib. That's true. This jib right here, that jip,
Speaker 1: this whole thing. Huh the jib over there too. I stay, Jim,
Speaker 1: and I see it. You guys have heard this probably
Speaker 1: kind of, you can assume. Mainly on The Sopranos. Mainly
Speaker 1: on The Sopranos, for sure. It's actually from maritime traditions.
Speaker 1: It's as old as like seventeenth century, eighteenth century. It's
Speaker 1: referencing the triangular shaped sail known as the jib. Some
Speaker 1: ships actually have more than one jib sail. They all
Speaker 1: have their own style. And I guess that's kind of
Speaker 1: refers to when you say I like the cut of
Speaker 1: your jib. It's like, oh, like, I like like your style. Man,
Speaker 1: I like your vibe, you know. So this is actually
Speaker 1: the jib, is the fabric, the exactly. Oh and another thing,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this was verified or any
Speaker 1: but I read that because these jib sales look vaguely
Speaker 1: like a nose, it could refer very specifically to someone's
Speaker 1: facial features. Oh, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: very specific compliment to give someone. I feel like you
Speaker 1: have to know someone pretty well for sure to be like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Duranty, I like the cut of your jib. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a joke for the elders. Everyone google Jimmy. Come on,
Speaker 1: doesn't he say like something to make that up? Isn't
Speaker 1: as big nose isn't also quite red and largely probably
Speaker 1: due to burst blood vessels from alcoholism, balbous from the
Speaker 1: gin face for days. That makes sense. So wait, what
Speaker 1: is a jib sale? Though we know it's a sale,
Speaker 1: is it? You said they have multiple ones? Well, it's
Speaker 1: a I'm assuming affiliated with the mass of the boat.
Speaker 1: So which is the big wooden middle part that then vs.
Speaker 1: The jib sale? I don't quote me on that, but
Speaker 1: this is what I took in when I was scrambling
Speaker 1: to learn the animalogy of chip and I'm surprised to
Speaker 1: learn that there's this um nasal illusion. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start calling people's noses jibs for sure. Keep you jib cleaning,
Speaker 1: keep a jim clean man what you mean? So with noses,
Speaker 1: don't don't be putting your jib and other people's you know, jibs.
Speaker 1: Remember jib jab. Okay, we're going off tangent now. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to replace the word knows with jib every
Speaker 1: time I every time the opportunity presents this along with
Speaker 1: nippet in the butt is setting up my next Oh
Speaker 1: my god, butts and noses, and then that's that's a
Speaker 1: perfect setup for a brown nose. Of course, think about that,
Speaker 1: which is kind of one that I thought about earlier
Speaker 1: as well. That's disgusting. Fair enough, that's discussed. That's disgusting.
Speaker 1: I feel like that because it refers to the pooh
Speaker 1: on the nose because you're kissing someone's booty so hard. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the rest is obvious. But and that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't actually choose that one, because it seems obvious. Well,
Speaker 1: there's someone maybe who has a who's just having a
Speaker 1: the more you know moment right now Brown right the
Speaker 1: light bulb over their head just bursts. They're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. Brown knows god it, Pope. I want
Speaker 1: to check in real quick, Casey or any of these
Speaker 1: surprising you so far? Uh? I hate to be the
Speaker 1: un actually guy, but no, not well hold on, Casey,
Speaker 1: you didn't know the history of all these. You assumed
Speaker 1: this is an educational program. This is true, this is true. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we still luckily have one more shot to uh surprised
Speaker 1: and unactually are again very beloved super un Actually is
Speaker 1: that cannot be our next podcast? Actually it's a good idea, Noel,
Speaker 1: are our hopes for this episode today rest with you?
Speaker 1: My friends? Man, that's a lot of pressure, um and
Speaker 1: I'm struggling right now, because our our internet has has
Speaker 1: just abandoned me. It is forsaken me. We don't use
Speaker 1: that while recording. That is a line. This is straight
Speaker 1: from our endless Jeopardy brains. Well, that's that's very very nice,
Speaker 1: very nice of you to think that Rowan newbie. But
Speaker 1: but at last that is not the case. Although to
Speaker 1: be fair, Ben and are the only ones with laptop
Speaker 1: is chines in front of us right now. Rowan is
Speaker 1: pure pen and paper. I am a moral paper and brains.
Speaker 1: That's what rowing is. Doom doom, doom doom. Is that
Speaker 1: how you doing? Ice Ice baby? Or under pressure? You
Speaker 1: know what? Man, Let's be honest, Vanilla Ice ripped it off.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of intertwined at this point, right at
Speaker 1: that great moment that v H one uh whatever the
Speaker 1: show was where he tries to explain music. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where he tries to explain their different because he says
Speaker 1: there's a yeah, this is like an extra an extralip whatever.
Speaker 1: Well you guys, I I'm I'm ready. I'm ready to
Speaker 1: take on this and it's actually really serendipitous. Um I
Speaker 1: I did know what our pal Rowan was gonna do.
Speaker 1: Um with the cut of the jim and all. But
Speaker 1: I didn't actually do any research into it. I had
Speaker 1: no idea that it was a nautical term. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, mine is also a nautical term um, and
Speaker 1: it involves not the jib or the sale itself. And
Speaker 1: it's actually really interesting because I think that these things
Speaker 1: sound like they should be flipped. Mine is three sheets
Speaker 1: to the wind. And, as it turns out, in nautical parlance,
Speaker 1: which you would think would be the sale, not so
Speaker 1: it's the line that tethers the sale interesting right and
Speaker 1: comandwadays to mean someone who is very inebriated and very inereate.
Speaker 1: I I didn't know this one at all. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have any inkling. It's one of those ones that
Speaker 1: I just chose blindly to use um. And sometimes I
Speaker 1: would even go so far as to say more than
Speaker 1: three sheets, you know sheets, your seven sheets, your ten sheets,
Speaker 1: fifteen sheets to the wind, target, linen department to the
Speaker 1: wind exactly, your blotto exactly. Whatever. Yeah. So, uh, Rowan,
Speaker 1: you may not have I don't know how much of
Speaker 1: a stand fast fan riticularly story you are, but we
Speaker 1: did do an episode where we kind of listed through
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin's expressions for being drunk, and ben just listed
Speaker 1: a few. They're great, um, but one that Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: did not come up with is three sheets to the
Speaker 1: wind um And this is this is so crazy to
Speaker 1: me because yeah, these were not uh sheets or sales
Speaker 1: as you might think. There wasn't even wind. Well there
Speaker 1: there there hopefully was the ship's not gonna go. They
Speaker 1: were lines, ropes, sometimes they were chains, and they're the
Speaker 1: things if you've ever been on a sailboat or a
Speaker 1: sloop of some sort of perhaps a barge. No barges
Speaker 1: don't have sails, I don't know. I'm not a I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a bit of it. I'm I'm a land lover.
Speaker 1: The call that, um, Yeah, they're fixed to the bottom
Speaker 1: corners of the sails to hold them in place that
Speaker 1: they catch the wind. And again, if there's any sailor
Speaker 1: types out there, forgive my ignorance. I'm doing the best
Speaker 1: I can. But I believe a sail would require three
Speaker 1: sheets to be properly fastened and uh and you know,
Speaker 1: tightened so that you could actually manipulate it and put
Speaker 1: it um, you know, in the direction of the wind,
Speaker 1: so it catches the wind. So but again, this to
Speaker 1: the wind business doesn't even refer to the wind that's
Speaker 1: catching the sails. It refers to the sheets or the
Speaker 1: lines being or in the wind. You know, like if
Speaker 1: their ship be steered, it can't be steered. Not only that,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be erratic because the sale is there and
Speaker 1: it's catching some of the wind, but it's flopping around
Speaker 1: like crazy, and so in sort of resembling a drunk
Speaker 1: person stumbling yeah, so um. They're actually variations on this, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're one sheet to the wind, you're gonna
Speaker 1: not be quite as tight. You're gonna have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a little a little bit of a little
Speaker 1: tipsy y's right. Um. And then if you've got two sheets,
Speaker 1: you're kind of in the middle there. And if you've
Speaker 1: got three sheets, you're not looking good. You're embarrassing yourself. Dad,
Speaker 1: go home, your boat has sprung a leak. If you
Speaker 1: do not get an uber boat home, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: and if it's not, it should be Also side note,
Speaker 1: in the time of f. Scott Fitzgerald, the phrase tight
Speaker 1: was used to mean getting drunk. That's right, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a that is a very very good edition there,
Speaker 1: ben Um. So it's interesting because this expression goes back
Speaker 1: to in a book by Pierce Egan called Real Life
Speaker 1: in London, and it um, this is out of context.
Speaker 1: And I'm getting this from an article on phrases dot
Speaker 1: org dot uk, which is fantastic for these etymological explorations. Um.
Speaker 1: And the quote that they cite out of context is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Old waxen bristles is about three sheets in the wind.
Speaker 1: It was old wax and I guess old waxen bristles. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Everybody was old wax and bristol waxen like it three
Speaker 1: sheets in the winds, not to the winds, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and then then it got changed to to the wind
Speaker 1: and yeah. And then in this article as well, they
Speaker 1: talked about the scale of drunkenness that sailors had, where
Speaker 1: like I said before, three sheets was completely stupefied, falling
Speaker 1: over yourself, drunk, your tipsy, like you said, rowan was
Speaker 1: one sheet and then or a sheet in the wind's eye.
Speaker 1: And actually they don't list to two sheets, but surely
Speaker 1: two sheets was the middle ground has to be right,
Speaker 1: because that's going to give you some stability on that sale,
Speaker 1: but not enough. And they even have another example using
Speaker 1: a windmill, like a Dutch windmill, which would have fours.
Speaker 1: They would have four. Um, what do you call it turbans? No,
Speaker 1: that's not one wing on a turban is not a turban.
Speaker 1: The turbine, well they some some people in the engineering
Speaker 1: community pronounced it turban. Oh, I know it's true. I
Speaker 1: only know this because I used to work probably radio,
Speaker 1: and I covered the nuclear industry and I would interview
Speaker 1: these engineering nuclear nerds and they would call them turbans
Speaker 1: and the actually and I'm doing it. I'm actually right
Speaker 1: now and I'm pro nerds. So I love nerds, and
Speaker 1: I'm saying that sort of that is not what I'm
Speaker 1: doing at all. Ben, I love nerds. I there are
Speaker 1: some Okay, you guys are really making me no, no,
Speaker 1: but here you go. So, yeah, if you have four
Speaker 1: of these, um, you know, let's call them, what do
Speaker 1: you call one thing in a propeller one part of
Speaker 1: a propelled blades blade, I am not doing Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you have like, um, four of them, right, so
Speaker 1: if one of them is out of commission, he got three,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a very unstable turban. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: so three sheets to the wind anyway, so there's more
Speaker 1: um it actually uh carries on in literary history um
Speaker 1: in a novel called The Fisher's Daughter by a writer
Speaker 1: named Katherine Ward. And here's another quote from this phrases
Speaker 1: dot Org article. From this work, Wolf replenished his glass
Speaker 1: at the request of Mr Blust, who, instead of being
Speaker 1: one sheet in the wind, was likely to get to
Speaker 1: three before he took his departure. Right, that makes sense. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: so really beautiful. Express it is a beautiful question. At
Speaker 1: this point, we're still three sheets in the wind. And
Speaker 1: then we have the modern three sheets to the wind
Speaker 1: that comes in a book called The Journal of Reverend
Speaker 1: Francis Asbury that talks about this gentleman's travels through Kentucky
Speaker 1: through Kentucky in the United States. But yet this is
Speaker 1: an Englishman and the writer um also English. And this
Speaker 1: is the line from this work. The tavern keepers were
Speaker 1: kind and polite, as Southern folks should be, and as
Speaker 1: Southern folks ought not to be. They were sometimes two
Speaker 1: sheets in the wind. Oh that liquid fire. Not to
Speaker 1: cryp too hard from the incredible phrases dot org article,
Speaker 1: But it goes on to talk about how Robert Louis
Speaker 1: Stevenson um really popularized this phrase for a wider audience,
Speaker 1: because obviously Treasure Island was like a blockbuster of a novel,
Speaker 1: gave us all kinds of pirate parlance, right like shivermy
Speaker 1: timbers and talking about searching for treasure. You got your
Speaker 1: ex that marks the spot. The image of a pirate
Speaker 1: with a peg leg and a parrot, you know that
Speaker 1: whole all that image, all of that, all that imagery
Speaker 1: comes from from Robert Louis Stevenson. And the quote that
Speaker 1: he uses with this phrase, uh, goes back to the
Speaker 1: old way, which is maybe you think we are all
Speaker 1: a sheet in the wind's eye, but I tell you
Speaker 1: I was sober, and there's a lot of great pirate
Speaker 1: slang in Treasure Island. I think there are also some
Speaker 1: arguments about how much of that was Stevenson going this
Speaker 1: is what I think of pirate will sound like, and
Speaker 1: how much of it was actual pirate speech. And you
Speaker 1: know what, we could do a great piece on genuine
Speaker 1: pirate speech, because a lot of these guys tended to
Speaker 1: be polyglots, you know, they met so many other people.
Speaker 1: But before we continue, Casey could we have a drumroll, please,
Speaker 1: did null save the day? Was this a phrase that
Speaker 1: you were unaware of origin? Story wise? Yes, Casey on
Speaker 1: the case I did it. Who just kidding, guys, just kidding.
Speaker 1: We all did it. Everyone brought amazing stuff to the table.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Rowan, Nubi of Pitches podcast fame.
Speaker 1: Check it out. I think it's on SoundCloud now but
Speaker 1: soon if on iTunes and all the places you find
Speaker 1: podcast past at Pitches podcast. Not for the kiddos, it's
Speaker 1: uh it it gets, it gets pretty b blue at times.
Speaker 1: It gets a little blue. Little well, if you want
Speaker 1: your kids to have an accelerated learning course in the
Speaker 1: ways off, yeah, it's not that bad. You guys, well,
Speaker 1: if you like the cut of ridiculous histories, Jim, we
Speaker 1: imagine that you uh, you will go bananas. We didn't
Speaker 1: look at what that means, but you will go pitches.
Speaker 1: So check it out. As Neal said, don't hesitate to
Speaker 1: get the to the internet. In the meantime. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming browin. It's really been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure here too. It's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: hanging out Rowan. Just like me and Ben, we we
Speaker 1: always say this. I think we say it so much
Speaker 1: people might think we're not telling the truth, but I
Speaker 1: swear we are in fact all friends outside of the
Speaker 1: show and we hang out. And it was nice to
Speaker 1: have you enter the shipping container. Uh the podcast sphere
Speaker 1: UM with with Ridiculous History. Yeah, I'd actually like to
Speaker 1: get a picture of you Rowan, if you're comfortable with
Speaker 1: that's been we could have faced to a name and
Speaker 1: we'll pop it up on my Instagram, which is at
Speaker 1: ben Bowling. Maybe we'll get our ridiculous history folks to
Speaker 1: retweet it or I'm sorry re gramm it is that
Speaker 1: a thing? Don't you have has a separate app for that.
Speaker 1: It's a really annoying most that it's a weird one.
Speaker 1: I'm really into the stories, um. I think it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. That's really the closest thing you can
Speaker 1: do to re gramming stuff. Put them on those stories.
Speaker 1: You can check me out at Embryonic Insider. You can
Speaker 1: check rowing out at Pitches podcast. On the instagram, um,
Speaker 1: you can check out Ridiculous History at Ridiculous History UM. Also,
Speaker 1: if you want to hang out with your fellow ridiculous historians,
Speaker 1: you can do that on our Facebook group, which is
Speaker 1: the Ridiculous Historians. You just have to name one of
Speaker 1: our names, or Casey's name, or you know, or make
Speaker 1: us laugh. Oh name dropping. That's another one we don't
Speaker 1: talk about. That's very true. That can probably figure out
Speaker 1: where that one goes big. Thanks to super producer Casey
Speaker 1: Pegram and Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yes, Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our research associate team. Thanks very much
Speaker 1: to you guys out there listening in podcast land. This
Speaker 1: episode is over, but the story of strange phrases continues.
Speaker 1: When you are reaching out to us, let us know
Speaker 1: what what phrase always sounded very strange to you, or
Speaker 1: the origin story of something, and let us know if
Speaker 1: you want to see idiots on idioms or idiomatic for
Speaker 1: the people um rearing its head once again, idiom. There
Speaker 1: you go in the Ridiculous his story in a sphere,
Speaker 1: There we go. We'll see you next time, folks. Sick
Speaker 1: four