“Propose a Toast” and the Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions (Pt. 17)

On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson shares another slice of his guide to understanding the baffling mini-mysteries of the English language. The book is Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions and Fun Phrases.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including yours. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites, and up next a recurring favorite.
We continue our series about the curious origins of everyday
says here to join us again as Andrew Thompson as

(00:31):
he continues to share another slice from his Ultimate Guide
to Understanding these many Mysteries of the English Language. Here's Andrew.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
If you say peter out, you mean to dwindle, or diminish,
or come to an end. Some suggest the expression comes
from Biblical times and the apostle Peter when he strenuously
defended Christ when Christ was arrested, but by the next
morning he's supported diminished. However, the likely origin of the
phrases actually from the early days of gold mining in America.

(01:03):
Potassium nitrate non as saltpeter was a mineral ingredient in
the explosives used in mining. When all the gold in
a mine was exhausted, it was said to have petered
out because the explosives had dwindled it down until nothing
was left. The expression was used figuratively by the eighteen forties.
Pigeon English is a term meaning a simplified language used

(01:26):
to communicate between two people who don't have a common language,
and it originated in the late seventeenth century. It was
developed by British traders in China as a way of
doing business without having a common language. The expression actually
means business English and came about because of the mispronunciation
of the English word business by the Chinese. They pronounced

(01:46):
it bidgeon, and this led to pigeon. The language they
used was a combination of both English and Cantonese and
was spoken as a second language. Then Over the years,
the phrase pidgeon English developed to mean any two languages
that a piece together to aid a communication. From pillar
to post means from one place to another, and it

(02:09):
dates back to a brutal form of punishment in medieval England.
Each town at the time had a whipping post and
a pillary to deal with criminals, also known as the stocks.
A pillary was a wooden frame with three holes in it.
A criminal's head and hands would be placed through the holes,
and the public would gather and throw rotten vegetables and
eggs at the man. This may last even a number

(02:29):
of days. The criminal will then be dragged to the
whipping post, where he would receive a public flogging. Originally
from pillary to post, the expression gradually evolved to pillar
to post. Pipe dreams are unrealistic hopes or plans, or
a fantasy, and they refer to the dreams experienced by
the smokers of opium pipes. Opium is a narcotic drug

(02:52):
that produces an hypnotic effect, and the pipe is the
device that the open is placed in. People under the
influence of opium often have vivid and fantastic hallucinations. The
expression was then used in America since the late eighteen hundreds,
when opium smoking was legal, and the phrase was first
written in eighteen ninety in an edition of the Chicago

(03:14):
Daily Tribune where they were talking about the first man
made flight, and it was said it has been regarded
as a pipe dream for a good many years. If
he plugs something that means you promote something and it
owes its beginnings to Captain Leonard Frank Plugg As Pluge
a British businessman and politician who was prominent in the

(03:37):
early nineteen hundreds. He created a broadcasting company that bought
airtime from European radio stations. He reached an agreement with
the French station Radio Normandy to produce programs and transmit
them to England. Plug partially financed Radio Normandy by receiving
payments to play and promote records, and it was from
this practice that Plug's name came to mean to plug something.

(04:01):
Point blank means to tell directly or to refuse completely,
and it has sporting beginnings, which originated in France. Point
blanc is French for white mark the bull's eye or
center of an archery target, and a shot from distance
at that sport has to be aimed above the target
to allow it to drop with gravity, But a shot
point blank is close enough so that the flight of

(04:23):
the arrow hits the target directly without any arching. The
expression then later was widened to refer to anything done
at very close range, especially gunfire. To propose a toast
is obviously a ritual in which a drink has taken
in someone's honor, and that began as early as the
twelfth century. The quality of the wine at the time
was not high and varied a lot in order to

(04:44):
soak up some of the acidity and improve the flavor.
A piece of spiced toast was placed in a wine jug,
or small pieces were placed in wine glasses. By the
seventeenth century in England, the practice of proposing a toast
to someone emerged. The glass would be raised as it
is today, and it was usually a lady who was toasted.
The idea was that she became a figurative piece of

(05:07):
toast that flavored the wine. To pull out all the
stops means to make every possible effort, and that stems
from the musical world. Church organs used knobs that control
the airflow through the pipes, and these knobs are known
as stops. When all the stops are in, the airflow
was less and the music not very loud. If there
were not many people in a congregation and the music

(05:29):
was needed to be heard at the back of the church,
the organist would pull out all the stops, which would
increase the volume. To pull the wool over your eyes
means to trick or deceive, and it relates the elaborate
wigs that people wore in the seventeenth century. The whigs
had a thick, wooly appearance, and the social standing of
a man was sometimes judged by the size of his wig.

(05:50):
The bigger it was, the more wealth the man was
thought to have. By wearing large wigs, men were advertising
their wealth and then became a target for petty criminals.
Ar's whig would also be able to be pulled down
more easily, so a tactic employed by some criminals was
to creep up behind a man and pull the wig
down over his eyes. This would temporarily render the victim

(06:11):
unable to see, making him easier to rob. A purple
patch is a period of notable success of good fortune,
and that expression stems from ancient Rome. At the height
of the Roman Empire, purple, which became known as imperial purple,
was a revered color and was reserved for emperors and
other distinguished statesmen. This is because purple dye was great,

(06:33):
to be prized and rare. It was obtained from the
mucous secretions of a sea snail found in the Mediterranean Sea,
and did not easily fail, but became brighter with weathering
In sunlight. The Roman nobleman wore purple togures, and because
they were considered exceptional people to whom all was provided,
purple patch later became associated with success.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
In a job well done on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks to Andrew Thompson for his storytelling
on the origins of everyday sayings and a plug for
the book The Hair of the Dog To Paint the
Town Read the curious origins of everyday sayings and funphrases.
These great stories about our language and where sayings came from.

(07:16):
Here on Our American Stories. Liehbib here the host of
Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing

(07:37):
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