"Red Tape & Rule of Thumb" and the Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions (Pt. 19)

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. His 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 saints.
Here to join us again as Andrew Thompson as he

(00:32):
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):
Red tape is pointless bureaucratic procedures or excessive regulations, and
it derives from the sixteenth century in Britain. Since that time,
legal and official documents have been bound with red ribbon.
Documents were rolled in their original condition and seal with
red tape. This was done as a mejia sure documents
had not been tampered with, similar to wax seals and

(01:03):
ancient times, official Vatican documents were also bound in red cloth,
and to this day many legal documents are bound in
pink or red coloured material. The phrase was then expanded
to its current form by Charles Dickens, who used it
in a number of his books, including David Copperfield Bleak
house and little dorrit. To rest on your laurels means

(01:25):
to be satisfied with a past performance and to think
any future effort is unnecessary, and that expression harks back
to ancient Greek Apollo, the famous Greek god, was usually
depicted by the crown of laurel leaves around his head,
and a wreath of laurels became a symbol of status
and achievement, and these wreaths were presented to winning athletes

(01:46):
at various athletic games in the sixth century BC. The
Romans then embraced the laurel as a status symbol and
would present wreaths to victorious generals, and the people who
were presented with these wreaths became non of laureates, a
term that's still used to this day. Because they were
then so respected, laureates were able to bask in the

(02:07):
glory of their achievements and rest on their laurels, and
that's how the expression came about. To ride roughshod means
to treat harshly, and it has military beginnings. Horses that
are roughshod have nail heads and sometimes metal points protruding
from the bottom of their shoes. These are deliberately inserted
to provide extra traction in wet or icic conditions. During

(02:31):
the eighteenth century, it became common for cavalry soldiers to
intentionally roughshod their horses. This turned the horses into brutal weapons,
severely damaging the foot soldiers and horses of the enemy
when they charged and rode roughshod over them. To ride
shotgun means to travel in the car's front passenger seat,
and it derives from the days of stagecoach travel in America.

(02:54):
During the nineteenth century, postal express messengers became known as
shotgun messages because they rode up the front of the
stage coach next to the driver and carried a loaded shotgun.
Stage coaches were often confronted by armed bandits or dangerous
animals such as bears, and the person riding shotgun was
there for protection. A right hand man is an invaluable

(03:15):
or an indispensable assistant or the second in command, and
it has its origins in ancient Roman Greece. In those times,
leaders are often under attack of threat of assassination, and
while most people were right handed, they carried their swords
on their right and because they carried their weapons on
their right. It was from the right that an enemy
could disable a man by grabbing his right arm his

(03:38):
sword arm, leaving invulnerable to attack. But with a trusted
allies sitting on the right, the leader would be protected.
But this also meant that the right hand man was
in a position himself to disable the leader, so placing
the man there was a gesture of great trust. If
you say something rings true and means a story is
tested and found genuine, it's commonly said as a story

(04:01):
has the ring of truth, and it has its origins
with the currency manufacturers of the Middle Ages. At that time,
monetary coins were actually made of gold, silver, or other
semi precious metals, with their value depending on the weight
of the metal they contained. It was difficult at the time,
because of the equipment and the scarcity of metals, to
produce coins of a uniform weight, and this provided criminals

(04:24):
with an opportunity. They would counterfeit coins by mixing small
quantities of gold or silver with a cheaper metal. But
when dropped on a stone slab, precious metals have a
clear ring to them compared to a dull and flat
tone of a fake metal. If someone wanted to test
if a coin was genuine, all they had to do
was drop it and see if it rang true. To

(04:45):
rise and shine means to get out of bed and
prepare for the day, and it's a simple phrase that
stems from the military. The rise is literal meaning to
wake up and get up, usually before dawn, and the
shine derives from shining boots, buckles, and other movement and
soldiers were expected to do each morning before heading to
the parade ground for inspection. So rise and shine is

(05:07):
quite a simple one to explain. A round robin is
something that operates in a rotational manner, like a letter
or petition or a sporting tournament where each player plays
all the others, and that expression stems from seventeenth century France,
when peasant revolts were rife. Whenever the king received a

(05:27):
petition for change which contained a list of signatures, he
would generally call in the top few people on the
list who are thought to be the ringleaders and behead them.
But people were still desperate to petition the king, so
the peasants devised a concept that they called a rond reuben,
meaning round ribbon. It was a length of ribbon joined
to form a circle, which the petitioners would sign this

(05:50):
disguised who'd signed first, and protected everyone. This practice was
actually adopted by sailors in the eighteenth century, where any
complaints were made by signing a circular titian so that
no single person looked like he was being mutinous. The
term was adapted to round robin by the seventeen hundreds.

(06:11):
A rule of thumb is a rough and useful principle
rather than a scientific calculation, and it's got many potential origins.
The Romans used their thumb as a measure of length,
from the thumb's last knuckle to the tip that was
one inch, and before the advent of thermometers, brew masters
would test the temperature of beer with their thumbs. And

(06:32):
while the thumb's being used that way since ancient times,
the saying didn't get coined until seventeen eighty two. It
was in that year that just As Buller of the
King's Bench in England delivered a judgment that formalized the
age old maxim of English law that allowed a man
to beat his wife provided that he used to stick
no thicker than his thumb. Buller was accused of being

(06:52):
prejudiced at the time and was attacked in a cartoon
where he was characterized as Judge Thumb, and the expression
rule of thumb became widespread from that time on.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks as always to Andrew Thompson for
sharing these terrific short stories about the origins of everyday sayings.
To get his book Hair of the Dog to Paint
the Town read, go to Amazon dot com or the
usual suspects the stories of the origins of everyday expressions

(07:24):
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