Wordorigins.org

To escape by the skin of one’s teeth is to narrowly avoid some hazard. It’s an odd phrase because, of course, teeth don’t have skin; it makes no literal sense.

The phrase comes from the Bible, specifically Job 19:20. It’s a direct translation of the original Hebrew. The first English translation to render it thus is the Geneva Bible of 1560:

I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe.

Earlier translations from the Hebrew translated it differently in an attempt to make literal sense. The Vulgate, for example, renders it as “labia circa dentes meos” or lips around my teeth.

The Hebrew text could have been poetic way of saying the teeth’s enamel. Or, and perhaps more likely, it was intended as hyperbole. The skin of the teeth is so narrow as to be almost nonexistent, nothing more than a film of saliva. So to escape by it is a narrow escape indeed.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Internet Sacred Text Archive)

Separated By A Common Language

A blog about the differences between American and British English, by Lynne Murphy, an American linguist living in England.

L’esprit de l’escalier, or staircase wit, is that frightfully witty, worthy of Oscar Wilde comeback that occurs to you hours after the opportunity to make it is lost.

The phrase was coined by Denis Diderot (1713-84) in Paradoxe sur le Comédien, written 1773-78. In 18th century French l’esprit meant wit, not the current sense of mind or spirit. So a modern translation might be spirit of the staircase, indicating that there was some sort of staircase dryad that whispers the comeback to you as you ascend to your bedroom after the party is over. But this would not be an accurate interpretation of Diderot’s original thought.

The earliest English language citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Fowler’s 1906 The King’s English:

The French have had the wit to pack into the words esprit d’escalier the common experience that one’s happiest retorts occur to one only when the chance of uttering them is gone, the door is closed, and one’s feet are on the staircase. That is well worth introducing to an English audience; the only question is whether it is of any use to translate it without explanation. No one will know what spirit of the staircase is who is not already familiar with esprit d’escalier; and even he who is may not recognize it in disguise, seeing that esprit does not mean spirit (which suggests a goblin lurking in the hall clock), but wit.

(Sources: Yale Book of Quotations; Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; The King’s English at www.bartleby.com)

See l’esprit de l’escalier.

"If anything can go wrong, it will.” That is Murphy’s Law. But who was Murphy?

The standard story is that the term was coined in 1949. The Murphy in question is Captain Ed Murphy, a development engineer assigned to Colonel J.P. Stapp’s research on the rocket sleds that tested the limits of human endurance to acceleration and deceleration at Muroc Field, California (later renamed Edwards AFB). Murphy was referring to a particular technician, whose name has been lost to history, who had wired a piece of equipment incorrectly when he remarked, “if there is any way to do things wrong, he will.” A few weeks later in a press conference, Stapp allegedly credited his program’s safety record to planning for Murphy’s Law. The rest was history.

To throw the baby out with the bathwater is a German proverb that dates to at least 1512. It was first recorded by Thomas Murner’s in his satire Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools). Despite its fame in German (used by such notables as Luther, Kepler, Goethe, Bismarck, Mann, and Grass), it doesn’t appear in English for several more centuries, until Thomas Carlyle translated it and used it in an 1849 essay on slavery:

And if true, it is important for us, in reference to this Negro Question and some others. The Germans say, “you must empty-out the bathing-tub, but not the baby along with it.” Fling-out your dirty water with all zeal, and set it careering down the kennels; but try if you can to keep the little child!

There is no evidence that anyone ever actually tossed out a baby with the bathwater; it is simply evocative and alliterative imagery.

There is a bit of false internet lore circling the globe about life in England in the 1500s. One of the claims this gem of wisdom makes is that the phrase throw the baby out with the bathwater comes from the practice of taking annual baths using the same bathwater as the other family members. By the time the children got a chance to bathe, the water would be so dirty that infants could be lost in it. Hence the phrase. Of course, this is utterly false.

(Source: Yale Book of Quotations)

Well, I’ve just finished the revision of The Big List with the posting of the updated entry for Murphy’s Law a few minutes ago.

The revision took just over a year. (I started back on 8 April 2006.) Prior to the revision, some of the entries were nearly nine years old and badly in need of updating to reflect new research and improved research skills on my part. (Some of those early entries were embarrassingly bad.)

Moving forward, I’ll revise entries as they warrant it and I’ll be adding some of the old A Way With Words articles that are not currently on the site. These older articles will appear as “archived” versions under their original dates.

And I’ll be adding new items to the list at a greater rate than I have over the past year.

While the phrase twenty-three skidoo, meaning to go away, to leave, is associated with 1920s, it is actually somewhat older, dating to the turn of the 20th century. And the constituent element are even somewhat older.

Twenty-three is the oldest portion of the phrase. From the Morning Herald (Kentucky) of 17 March 1899:

For some time past there has been going the rounds of the men about town the slang phrase “Twenty-three.” The meaning attached to it is to “move on,” “get out,” “goody-bye, glad you are gone,” “your move” and so on. To the initiated it is used with effect in a jocular manner.

The bird we today call a turkey is native to America. Yet, how did it become associated with the country of Turkey?

Turk, the name of the people, is of unknown origin. It has cognates in the Romance languages, Byzantine Greek, Persian, and Arabic. It may even be related to the Chinese Tu-kin, a name given to a nomadic people thought to be who we now call the Huns. The Tu-kins occupied the land south of the Altai mountains in Asia in the 3rd century B.C.E.

A truck farm has nothing to do with motorized cargo vehicles. The truck in truck farm comes from the noun meaning trade or barter, a word borrowed from the Anglo-Norman truke in the 14th century. From Richard Hakluyt’s 1553 The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoueries of the English Nation (published in 1598):

No commutation or trucke to be made by any of the petie marchants, without the assent abouesaid.