22 February 2023
Among performers, it’s considered unlucky to wish someone good luck before they go on stage, so instead one says, break a leg. The sentiment clearly arises out of a desire not to jinx a performance, but why break a leg is the specific expression of this desire is a bit mysterious. Theatrical use of the phrase doesn’t appear until the mid twentieth century and is American in origin. But there are older and non-American uses of the phrase in other contexts.
One possible, but by no means certain, explanation is that it is a translation of and variation on the German Hals- und Beinbruch!, literally meaning “[broken] neck and broken leg.” The German phrase appears in hunting jargon by 1902 and had spread to the theater by 1913.
The earliest recorded use of the English phrase, in this case break your leg, is by Irish writer Robert Wilson Lynd in 1921. He is writing about the superstitions of the stage, but mentions the phrase in reference to horseracing superstitions:
The stage is, perhaps, the most superstitious institution in England, after the race course. The latter is so superstitious that to wish a man luck when on his way to a race-meeting is considered unlucky. Instead of saying “Good luck!” you should say something insulting such as, “May you break your leg!”
Breaking a leg would be unlucky for either horse or rider, and it isn’t much of a stretch for a phrase to move from German hunting circles to English horseracing. But since broken legs are common in racing, especially among thoroughbred horses, there doesn’t need to be an explicit connection to the German for the phrase to appear in English.
But there’s a more explicit connection to the German in American romance novelist Faith Baldwin’s 1925 Thresholds. Here the hunting is of a different sort, that of seeking romance:
Presently Paul was back with the slender stemmed glasses, and the pale golden bubbles danced at the crystal brims.
“Glück aŭf [sic], Kinder!”
It was Anne’s voice, high and clear. Rupert said, smiling a little:
“Isn’t that a Teutonic expression employed before the chase?”
“Not exactly. I believe that would be bad luck or something. You say, ‘I hope you break a leg’—or your neck—or some such hope of calamity.”
[Oddly, the Oxford English Dictionary states that evidence for the German connection “appears to be lacking,” yet that dictionary’s first citation of the phrase is the one above, one that clearly provides just such evidence.]
The earliest documented connection of break a leg to the theater is in Edna Ferber’s 1939 A Peculiar Treasure:
And when that grisly night of the dress rehearsal finally comes round, and the strange figures enter the dim auditorium and grope for seats and mumble and creep about and you make out the dressmaker and the dressmaker’s assistant and the girl from Bergdorf’s (the star’s clothes) and the girl from Saks’ (the ingénue’s) and the friend of the management, and somebody’s uncle, and all the understudies sitting in the back row politely wish the various principals would break a leg—it is then that everything goes suddenly completely and inextricably wrong and you realize that tomorrow night is just twenty-four hours away.
But again, the evidence here is tenuous. It’s not clear if the understudies are uttering “break a leg” out loud and feigning a good-luck wish or if they are silently hoping the lead literally break a leg and be unable to perform so they have a chance to go on stage.
The earliest unequivocal use of break a leg in a theatrical context that I’m aware of is in West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette of 29 May 1948:
Superstitions of the stage are numerous and many are peculiar to individual actors and actresses. That it is bad luck to whistle in a dressing room is a widely accepted belief. Another is that one actor should not wish another good luck before a performance but say instead “I hope you break a leg.”
And there is this 1951 column by theater critic and newspaper columnist Leonard Lyons:
TRADITION: The next time I saw Miss Truman on a platform was at the Runyon Fund’s special performance of “Guys & Dolls,” where she served as the fund’s hostess for the evening. I, as vice-president of the fund, was to introduce her from the stage. We stood in the wings at the Forty-sixth Street theatre, and when my cue came and started to walk onstage, I heard her call to me, “Break a leg.” … I wheeled, in disbelief at what I’d heard, and she repeated: “Break a leg.” … She later explained this superstition among concert artists—that it really means Good Luck.
While it’s clear that the expression and superstition is older than this column, it is likely not all that much older in theatrical circles. Since Lyons was well acquainted with the ways of the theater, the fact that he was unaware of the expression indicates that it was probably not yet in widespread use among actors when he wrote this. (Lyons was quite famous in his day, but is largely forgotten by the general public nowadays, though his son, film critic Jeffrey Lyons, is familiar to many today.)
Thus, the expression break a leg, used to wish a performer good luck, seems to only date to the mid twentieth century, and it seems to have arisen in American theatrical circles. It may have older connections to the use of the phrase in horseracing or hunting and more specifically to the German Hals- und Beinbruch, but the American theatrical usage may just as easily have arisen spontaneously and independently, either to avoid a jinx or as a joking expression uttered by an understudy to the lead.
But like many such terms, break a leg has spawned any number of false or unsupported explanations, unsubstantiated speculations that are touted as fact. A few of these purported explanations are as follows:
It arises from bowing or bending the knee, breaking the crease of one’s trousers during a curtain call after a successful performance.
Curtains on either side of the stage were called legs (I’m unaware of this term for stage curtains, but it might exist), and one had to pass them to make curtain call after a successful performance.
Actor Sarah Bernhardt had her leg amputated in 1915 and to wish someone that is to hope they emulate her success on stage. Why anyone would make this association is mysterious, but such speculations often are nonsensical.
And perhaps the most commonly recited explanation of all is that the phrase comes from the fact that John Wilkes Booth broke his leg jumping onto the stage after assassinating President Lincoln. Booth did indeed break his leg doing so, but there is no connection between the assassination and the expression of good luck.
Sources:
“Ask the Gazette.” Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), 29 May 1948, 4. NewspaperArchive.com. [The database’s metadata lists it as page 5.]
Baldwin, Faith. Thresholds. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1925, 74. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Break a Leg.” The Phrase Finder. No date.
Ferber, Edna. A Peculiar Treasure. New York: Doubleday, Doran 1939, 354.
Lynd, Robert Wilson. “A Defense of Superstition.” The Living Age, 5 November 1921. 427. Originally published in the New Statesman, 1 October 1921. Google Books.
Lyons, Leonard (Post-Hall Syndicate). “Broadway Medley.” San Mateo Times (California), 28 August 1951, 16. NewspaperArchive.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2016, s.v. leg, n.
Quinion, Michael. “Break a Leg.” World Wide Words, 2 May 2015.
Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.