Why Do We Say 'Close, But No Cigar'?

When we mean that someone has not quite succeeded, what do cigars have to do with it? Learn the carnival roots of this idiom in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/close-but-no-cigar.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren
Vogelbaum here. For as much as cigars give off smoke
that'll stick to your clothes, they've also spawned some similarly
sticky idioms In the English language. There's sometimes a cigar
is just a cigar, a meaning that you can't always

(00:24):
attribute Fredian sub meetings to things. The quote is often
attributed to Freud himself, but that seems to be apocryphal.
Another one that's slightly old fashioned but still kicking around
is what we need is a good five cent cigar,
which was popularized in the nineteen teens by then Vice
President of the United States Thomas Riley Marshall. If you're unfamiliar,

(00:47):
it means that what we need is something that's sensibly
affordable but still pragmatically useful, as opposed to something overly
complicated or expensive. He said it during a senate debate
about our country's needs. But perhaps more common these days,
if not less old fashioned, there's the phrase close but

(01:08):
no cigar. Oh. When someone said this to you, you
probably didn't ask for a cigar. Maybe you don't even
like them. So why is someone abruptly denying you one.
This phrase is most often used when someone is nearly
but not quite successful at something like a football player

(01:28):
drops an easy catch, or a desperate commuter runs but
misses their bus pulling away from the bus stop, or
a math student doesn't catch a critical detail and screws
up their whole equation. These are all situations worthy of
a close but no cigar. The gist is obvious to
anyone who grew up hearing it spoken among their friends

(01:49):
and family. Yet even if you understand what close but
no cigar means, you might wonder exactly where this idiom originated.
After all, what do cigars have to do with success?
It turns out cigars were once used as prizes for
carnival games in the United States in the early nineteen hundreds.

(02:10):
These games of skill or chance were often exasperatingly difficult,
and most people failed to win a prize. Such games
are still a feature of fairs today. Think of ring
tosses that never seemed to land, or basketball hoops that
spit out every ball thrown their way. When cigars were
the prizes. After a participant failed, a carnival barker or

(02:34):
the game runner might shout close but no cigar. The
phrase close but no Cigar appeared in the script for
the nineteen thirty five film Annie Oakley, but there were
earlier recorded uses, both in sports reporting and in national
geographic magazine. No matter who printed it first, it seems

(02:54):
that the phrase traveled quickly through the American vernacular because
of the way that carnivals moved from place to place.
In an article for the magazine Cigar Ficionado, the editor
of the Yale Book of Quotations, wrote that the game
in question was specifically one of those games of strength
called the high ball or high striker, where the player
uses a large hammer to strike a lever and send

(03:17):
a weight to high enough up a column to ring
a bell at the top. But it seems that several
different games might have inspired the phrase, and in other
countries as well. In nineteen oh two, a book called
The Night Side of London described many social scenes and
entertainments throughout Bustling Edwardy in London, including a traveling carnival

(03:38):
with games to play. A quote another penny gives you
the privilege of trying to roll three balls into certain
holes with numbers attached there on two. Should you score twenty,
you will win a cigar, but you do no more
than score nine. Undiscouraged or perhaps encouraged by this fact,
you spend another penny, and another and another, but you

(03:59):
don't get the cigar. And it is well for you
that you don't, for there are cigars and cigars on
you go, and next you try your hand at the coconuts,
or the skittles, or the clay pipes, or in the
shooting alleys, and so on and on until your stock
of pennies and patience is exhausted. Cigars are no longer

(04:19):
offered as prizes to carnival goers, though these days we
have to settle for oversized stuffed animals or the like.
Today's episode is based on the article why do we
say close but no Cigar? On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written
by Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart
Radio in partnership with hostuffwork dot Com and is produced

(04:42):
by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.