Wordorigins.org

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.

Why is inconsequential or useless knowledge known as trivia? The answer dates back to the medieval educational curriculum.

The seven liberal arts were broken into two courses of study. The upper level was known as the quadrivium (Latin for four way) and consisted of the mathematical sciences of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The lower level consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic and was known as the trivium.

To trip the light fantastic is to dance. It is an odd phrase, one that makes little sense on its face. This is because it is a garbled version of a line from Milton. In his 1632 poem L’Allegro, Milton wrote:

Com, and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastick toe.
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;

It is not light that is fantastic, but rather the toe or dance step. Both trip and light refer to the movement of the feet. The verb to trip has meant to step lightly, to dance since the 14th century. From Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale from c.1386:

In twenty manere koude he trippe and daunce
After the scole of Oxenford tho.
(In twenty manners could he trip and dance
After the school of Oxford at that time.)

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Triage is the practice of sorting into prioritized groups. It is, perhaps, most commonly used in emergency and military medicine, where is the name of the process for evaluating mass casualties and assigning priority of treatment. In a typical triage, patients are sorted into three groups, those who get immediate treatment, those who can wait, and the expectant—those expected to die—who are treated last. The cold logic is that in a situation with mass casualties, precious resources cannot be wasted on those who will most likely die anyway.

Because of this medical practice of dividing patients into three groups, it is commonly thought that triage comes from tri- or three, the sorting into three categories. This is incorrect. Triage is a borrowing from the French, which in turn is from the verb trier, meaning to pick or to cull (which is also the source of the English verb to try). The use of triage in English dates to the 18th century. From Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopædia, written between 1727-41:

Wool, Each fleece consists of wool of divers qualities, and degrees of fineness, which the dealers therein take care to separate...If the triage, or separation be well made, in 15 bales there will be [etc.].

The medical sense can be found from World War I. From a 27 December 1915[?] diary entry by a Tracy Putnam published in Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe’s 1916 The Harvard Volunteers in Europe: Personal Records of Experience in Military, Ambulance, and Hospital Service (the year of the diary entry is not given in the book, but it is almost certainly 1915):

The triage has been transferred from Moosch to Wilier; after leaving my men at the latter place, proceeded to the former.

And from the Washington Post of 14 June 1918:

Some “Triage” Hospitals.
Back of the nontransportable hospital near Montdidier that I described yesterday we have established, in that sector a considerable number of field hospitals[.] Some of these are “triage["] hospitals that is hospitals for meeting first aid emergencies, but equipped to do surgical work if necessary.
Essentially these hospitals are for the classification and distribution of wounded to the rear according to the character of the injuries.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Newspaperarchive.com)

Jay, Antony (2007). Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Political quotations, organized by speaker.

Prucher, J., ed. (2007). Brave new words: the Oxford dictionary of science fiction. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Historical dictionary of words from science fiction.