World War II-era poster from the US Office of War Information about meat rationing. The headline reads: “For the Square Deal and the Square Meal Share the Meat.” An image of Uncle Sam, in a butcher’s smock, cutting a large slab of beef.
4 January 2022
A square meal is a substantial, nutritious one. The phrase is an Americanism dating to the 1850s, but it is based on a much older sense of the adjective square.
Square comes into English by the late fourteenth century from the Anglo-Norman esquarre. An early example of the literal meaning can be found in John Trevisa’s translation of Ranulf Higden’s history titled Polychronicon. Trevisa’s translation is from sometime before 1387:
Babylon was i-build as a castel, and i-walled wiþ foure walles square al aboutes; eueriche wal was fifty cubites in brede, and four tyme so moche in heiþe; þe lengþe of euery wal from oon corner to anoþer was sixtene myle.
(Babylon was built as a castle and walled with four walls, square all about; every wall was fifty cubits in breadth and four times as much in height; the length of every wall from one corner to another was sixteen miles.)
Higden’s Latin reads paribus per quadrum (equal by means of a square).
But even as early as this, square had a figurative meaning of thick, solidly built. In the anonymous poem Sir Gawain and Green Knight, written about the same time, we see the word being used in the passage describing the Green Knight’s appearance in King Arthur’s court:
Now wyl I of hor seruise say yow no more,
For vch wyȝe may wel wit no wont þat þer were.
Anoþer noyse ful newe neȝed biliue,
Þat þe lude myȝt haf leue liflode to cach;
For vneþe watz þe noyce not a whyle sesed,
And þe fyrst cource in þe court kyndely serued,
Þer hales in at þe halle dor an aghlich mayster,
On þe most on þe molde on mesure hyghe;
Fro þe swyre to þe swange so sware and so þik,
And his lyndes and his lymes so lone and so grete,
Half-etayn in erde I hope þat he were,
Bot mon most I algate mynn hym to bene,
And þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride;
For of bak and of brest al were his bodi sturne,
Both his wombe and his wast were worthily smale,
And alle his fetures folȝande in forme, þat he hade
ful clene.(Now of that meal I will say no more, for each and every person knows well that there were none there that wonted. Another very new noise suddenly drew near, so that the prince might have leave to start eating; for scarcely a moment after the music had ceased, and the first course in the court properly served, there appeared at the hall door a dreadful master, the greatest on the earth in measure of height; from neck to hips so square and so thick, and his loins and his limbs so long and so great. I deem he was a half-giant on the earth, but in every way I deem him most handsome, and the best of his size that might ride; for his body was massive in back and in breast, both his stomach and waist were slender, and all his attendant features were finely formed.)
Despite having been written at about the same time, Sir Gawain is more difficult than Trevisa’s text for the present-day reader as it is written in the Cheshire dialect. Trevisa wrote in the London dialect, from which standard Present-Day English descends.
In the early seventeenth century, the adjective square started being applied to substantial portions of food and drink. From Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary:
Vn ferial beuveur, A square drinker, a faithfull drunkard; one that will take his liquor soundly.
And there is this scene from John Fletcher’s play The Tragedie of Bonduca, written c.1612 and published in 1647, about Boudica’s attempt to oust the Roman occupiers from Britain. In the scene, the notion that good soldiers eat heartily is put forth:
Hen[go]. Good Uncle tell me,
What's the price of a couple of cramm'd Romans?Car[atach]. Some twenty Britains boy; these are good soldiers,
Hen. Do not the cowards eat hard too?
Car. No more, boy.
Come, I'll sit with you too; sit down by me, boy.Jud[as]. Pray bring your dish then.
Car. Hearty knaves: More meat there.
1. Soul[ier]. That's a good hearing.
Car. Stay now and pledge me.
Jud. This little piece Sir.
Car. By——square eaters,
More meat I say: upon my conscience
the poor Rogues have not eat this month: how terribly
they charge upon their victuals: dare ye fight thus?Jud. Beleeve it sir, like devils.
The phrase square meal itself, however, does not appear until the 1850s. Here’s an example from Sacramento, California’s Democratic State Journal of 29 August 1856 in an article about a political speech:
The learned and eloquent counsel was throwing himself away, trying to convince the bystanders that the only hope we had, or have, of saving the Union, building the Pacific Railroad, or doing anything else, depended on the election to the seat once filled by Washington, of that distinguished warrior, and gigantic explorer, John Cattle Fremont. He succeeded only tolerably, though I must say that the perfectly organised band of clappers present earned the price they are to be paid, and I sincerely trust that it is large enough to enable them to again enjoy a luxury not known to them for some time past, of a four cornered or square meal.
And a few months later, on 15 December 1856, from that same newspaper:
THAT BULKHEAD.—The Sun is down upon the project “like a lunch-eater on a square meal,” and devotes a column to its denunciation.
It is also recorded in 1865 in the lyrics of a song sung by Black Union soldiers captured in South Carolina during the US Civil War. One source credits a Sergeant Johnson of Company F, Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry, a Black regiment, with writing the song:
When I enlisted in the army,
Then I thought ’twas grand,
Marching thro’ the streets of Boston
Behind a regimental band.
When at “Wagner” I was captured,
Then my courage failed;
Now I’m lousy, hungry, naked,
Here in Charleston jail.CHORUS. Weeping, sad and lonely,
Oh! how bad I feel;
Down in Charleston, South Car’lina,
Praying for a good square meal.
The idea that square meal is nautical in origin and refers to meals being served to sailors on square plates or trenchers is false.
The Phrase Finder website https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/square-meal.html claims an 1804 citation from a Wisconsin newspaper, the Republican Journal. But I cannot find any such paper, and it’s unlikely that there were English-language newspapers in Wisconsin that early. Furthermore, the Republican party, for which the paper is presumably named, was not founded until 1854. The Darlington, Wisconsin Republican Journal was founded in 1856, and the alleged citation may be from a 1904 issue of that paper, although I do not have access to issues that far back.
Sources:
Abbot, A.O. Prison Life in the South. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865, 107. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/
Andrew, Malcolm and Ronald Waldron. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, fourth ed. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Exeter: U of Exeter Press, 2002, 212–13.
Armitage, Simon, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, 28–29.
Babbington, Churchill, ed. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, vol. 1 of 9. London: Longman, et al., 1865, 1.13, 96–97. HathiTrust Digital Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Christ Church MS 89 (Higden), Cambridge, St. John's College MS H.1 (Trevisa).
Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611, s.v. ferial. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 29 August 1856, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Fletcher, John. The Tragedie of Bonduca. In Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. London: For Humphrey Robinson and Humphrey Moseley, 1647, 2.3, 55. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Glazier, Willard Worchester. The Capture, the Prison Pen, and the Escape (1865). New York: R.H. Ferguson, 1870, 152. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. square, adj.
“That Bulkhead.” Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 15 December 1856, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Image Credit: Office of War Information, c.1943. Public domain image.