tell it to the marines

James Montgomery Flagg, 1917, US WWI recruiting poster

9 February 2026

The origin of the phrase tell that to the marines is exactly what you might think it to be, an expression originally used by sailors that implies their shipmates in the marines are gullible. The earliest example of the phrase that I’m aware of is in John Davis’s 1806 novel The Post-Captain: or, The Wooden Walls Well Manned. Here it is used in an exchange between a sailor and an officer about a young woman who has just been brought aboard ship:

“Is not Flora, sir, a French name?”

“Yes it is; it is Creole French.”

“But the lady, sir, is English. Her husband at least said so.”

“He may tell that to the marines, but the sailors will not believe him.”

At first glance, this use might be just a simple collocation of the words rather than a set phrase. But the phrase appears three other times in the novel, each one followed by some variation saying that sailors are not so gullible.

By December 1820 we see the phrase being used outside a naval context. The article itself, which appears in the New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, has nothing particular to do with the sea, although the writer connects the phrase to life aboard ship. The introduction of the phrase with nostrum illud solenne (our usual) indicates that it is a catchphrase:

So also the able-bodied seamen, who think a certain part of their crew mere fruges consumere nati on board a ship, regularly consign all exaggerated narratives and incredible propositions to their “willing ears,” according to nostrum illud solenne, “You may tell that to the marines.”

Fruges consumere nati = exist to eat (lit., born to consume crops)

And by 1821 we have an example of the phrase that makes no nautical reference at all. Irish novelist Sydney Morgan (1778–1859) uses it a piece that savages a reviewer or her travelogue of Italy:

“In page 3,” adds this Captain O’Blunder of the Edinburgh,—“in page 3, Conquest is said to be consolidated by Usurpation; but I beg to inform Miladi, that Conquest consolidates Usurpation!"

Oh, my Chronomastix, you may “tell that to the Marines,” but the Cæsars and Napoleons would never have believed you! They were Conquerors first—Emperors afterwards; and they consolidated the conquests, which gave them an influence over the opinions of their fellow citizens, by usurpations, which gave them power over their rights

I think there are many authors who would like to respond to critics in a similar tone and fashion.

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Sources:

Davis, John. The Post-Captain: or, The Wooden Walls Well Manned. London: G. Hazard for Thomas Tegg, 1806, 28–29. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Morgan, Sydney. “Letter to the Reviewers of ‘Italy.’ Edinburgh Magazine, July 1821.” New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (London), vol. 2, 1821, 6–26 at 9–10. HathiTrust Digital Archive.  

“The New Adventurer.—No. III.” New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register (London), December 1820, 605–608 at 608/1. ProQuest Historical Periodical.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2015, s.v. tell, v.

Image credit: James Montgomery Flagg, 1917. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

franchise / enfranchise / disenfranchise

2 February 2026

The English franchise is a borrowing of an Anglo-Norman word, which could mean freedom in various contexts. It could mean freedom as opposed to serfdom; a special right, privilege, or exemption; a corporate body, such as a town or guild; citizenship or membership in a corporate body; or an area of land in which such privileges or corporate bodies could operate. Franchise could mean nobility of character. These senses were all imported into English.

We see the Middle English fraunchise in a life of St. Edmund in the South English Legendary, written c. 1300:

Wel ofte he bad þe kingue and his : ȝif it were heore wille,
Þat huy ne weorreden nouȝt a·ȝein holi churche : ake laten hire beo stille
In hire fraunchise and in pays : asc heo hadde i-beo ȝare.

(Very often he asked the king and his, if were their will, that they not war against the holy church, but to grant her tranquility in her franchise and in peace, as she had before.)

The French verb form, franchir, was brought into English at about the same time, as well. A bit later however, by the early fifteenth century, the French enfraunchir was also borrowed into English, and that would become the English verb to enfranchise, eventually replacing the form to franchise. It is commonly thought that this verb is a combination of en- + franchise, but that combination occurred in French, and English borrowed the already combined form.

In contrast, the addition of the prefix dis- to the verb, meaning to deprive someone of a right, occurred in English. We see disfranchise by the mid fifteenth century and disenfranchise by the mid seventeenth.

The sense of franchise meaning a right or privilege specialized to refer to particular such rights, for instance the right to vote, was in place by 1769. In early use this was often in the phrase elective franchise. And the sense of the right to operate a business under a certain brand, such as a sports or fast-food franchise, is in place by the late nineteenth century.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, AND2 Phase 2, 2006–28, s.v., franchise, n., franchir, v.; AND2 Phase 1, 2000–06, s.v. enfranchir, v.

Horstmann, Carl, ed. “St. Eadmund þe Confessor.” The Early South English Legendary. Early English Text Society. London: N. Trübner, 1887, lines 515–17, 446. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud 108. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Middle English Dictionary, 8 October 2025, s.v. fraunchis(e, n., fraunchisen, v., enfraunchisen, v., disfraunchisen, v.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2009, s.v. franchise, n., franchise, v.; 1891, s.v. enfranchise, v.; 1896, s.v. disenfranchise, v., disfranchise, v.

Photo credit: Stu Pendousmat, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Tommy / Tommy Atkins

A Tommy of the Worcester Regiment in a trench at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, 1916

30 January 2026

The great joy of running this website is that now and again I uncover an origin that simultaneously connects with great historical figures and events and reveals how language, the most human of inventions, works. The British slang term for a soldier, Tommy, is just such a word. It is short for Tommy Atkins, and the word’s history, both purported and real, pulls in both the great, i.e., the Duke of Wellington, and the small, i.e., an example of how to fill out a government form correctly.

As mentioned, Tommy is slang for a British private soldier. It is famously used in an 1890 Rudyard Kipling poem of that title, although that is hardly the first use of the term:

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ’e up and sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,

Today, the word is chiefly associated with those who fought in the First World War—the British equivalent of the American doughboy—but its origins are at least a hundred years older, dating to the Napoleonic wars, if not before. It’s primarily found in British usage, but North Americans may be familiar with Tommy from movies about the two World Wars and from the Kipling poem. And the oldest among us will remember its use during the first half of the twentieth century, when the word had some currency on this side of the pond.

Who is the Tommy Atkins who lent his name as a sobriquet for the British soldier? Most likely there is no real person behind the term’s use. While there have been a number of British soldiers with that name over the centuries, the name was probably picked because its only remarkable feature is its lack of remarkability, like John Smith. The first securely documented use of the term is in the form Thomas Atkins. And not only is it in that form, it’s quite literally on a form, the 1815 Collection of Orders, Regulations, &c., a book that was issued to every British soldier and that contained a record of his pay and allowances. Like all good bureaucratic documents, that book provides an example of how to properly fill out a form for a soldier’s pay:

Description, Service, &c. of Thomas Atkins, Private, No. 6 Troop, 6th Regt. of Dragoons. Where Born… Parish of Odiham, Hants.
When ditto… 1st January 1784.
Height… 5 Feet 8½ inches.
[...]
Bounty, £7, 7s. Received, Thomas Atkins, his X mark.

The beauty of this specific use is that it would have been seen by thousands of officers and soldiers all across the British Empire, permanently cementing the name’s use as a soldier’s sobriquet. In fact, this book was so closely associated with the name that soldiers took to calling the book itself the Tommy Atkins. We tend to look to Shakespeare and great literary works for linguistic innovation, but more often it’s things like humble bureaucratic documents, texts that we see on a daily basis but don’t take conscious note of, that leave a more profound mark on the language.

There is a popular story that the name in the 1815 document was coined by the Duke of Wellington in honor of a soldier who had died bravely at the Battle of Boxtel in 1794, Wellington’s first major battle. The story, which is unsupported by any evidence other than repeated hearsay claims that it is true, says that the war office consulted the duke on an appropriate name for a soldier to use in its 1815 pay book and that Wellington recalled the battle where Atkins, as he lay dying, told the young duke-to-be that the multiple wounds he had received were “all a day’s work.” Wellington allegedly chose the name to honor the brave lad. In addition to these alleged last words being too good to be true, the biographical details in the pay book don’t match those of the alleged namesake, and most tellingly, it is unlikely that the War Office would have bothered Wellington with such bureaucratic minutiae in 1815, given that the duke was busy with other things at the time, such minor concerns as the Battle of Waterloo and exiling Napoleon to St. Helena.

If this tale has no evidence behind it, what evidence would it take to convince us that it were true? Well, if someone produced a draft manuscript of the 1815 pay book with Wellington’s emendation or a letter from the Duke instructing the change be made, that would clinch it. Failing that, an after-the-fact letter or memoir of Wellington’s telling the story of his directing the change would be almost as good. A documented, second-hand account by someone who knew Wellington would be strong evidence, but not in-and-of-itself convincing. Even evidence from muster rolls that a soldier named Thomas Atkins of the 33rd Regiment of Foot (Wellington’s regiment) died at Boxtel would be something. But we have none of these or anything like them.

Furthermore, the Wellington story doesn’t appear until many decades after the fact—the earliest version I know of that connects Wellington to Tommy Atkins only dates to 1908, and that one that is demonstrably false because it gives the date of Wellington’s coinage as 1843. I have found no versions of the tale, even those told by professional historians, that reference any source material that would support the tale as being true. The tale is simply repeated and everyone, even historians who should know better, take that repetition as evidence. If the Iron Duke ever related the Atkins story to someone, we have no record of him doing so. More likely this is another example of a famous name over time becoming associated with a myth. We have a tendency to ascribe events and phenomenon to famous people.

There is a possible older use of Tommy Atkins to refer to generic British soldiers from 1743, although the evidence for this appearance is only in secondary sources. On 24 December 1937, the Daily Telegraph, which had been publishing an ongoing series of reader commentaries on the origin of the term, published this letter:

Sir—In reference to the interesting discussion in your columns concerning the genesis of the term “Thomas Atkins” as generally applied to the British soldier, it would appear that the appellation had its origin long before the period attributed to Wellington.

This is evidence from a M.S. letter in my possession, dated 1743, and addressed from Jamaica, in which the writer, an Anglo-Irish officer, after giving a vivid and thrilling description of a mutiny among the hired soldiery, says: “… Except for those from N. America (mostly Irish Papists), ye Marines and Tommy Atkins behaved splendidly…”

So much for the modern habit of dogmatic finality on the part of our would-be historians.—Faithfully yours,

EDW. E. BURGESS, F.R.S.A.
Granton-road, Leeds. Dec. 22.

If the manuscript letter is genuine, this would push the date of the term to the first half of the eighteenth century. That is certainly plausible, but all we have is this account of the letter from 1937. But even if the 1743 letter isn't genuine, it is likely that by the time the 1815 document was issued Thomas (or Tommy) Atkins was already a generic slang term for a soldier, and its appearance in the 1815 document is an attestation, rather than a coinage.

Perhaps it is fitting that the archetype of the British soldier be named for someone who exists only in myth.

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Sources:

Burgess, Edward E. “Tommy Atkins in 1743” (letter, 22 December 1937). Daily Telegraph and Morning Post (London), 24 December 1937, 9/2. Gale Primary Sources: The Telegraph.

Carter, Philip. “Atkins, Thomas (d. 1794),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online ed, May 2006.

Clode, Charles M. The Military Forces of the Crown: Their Administration and Government, vol 2 of 2. London: John Murray, 1869. 59. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 12 December 2025, s.v. Tommy Atkins, n.

Kipling, Rudyard. “Barrack-Room Ballads. II—‘Tommy.’” Scots Observer, 1 March 1890, 409–10 at 409/2. British Newspaper Archive.

Laffin, John. Tommy Atkins: The Story of the English Soldier. London: Cassell, 1966. xi–xiii. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, June 2014, s.v. Thomas Atkins, n., Tommy Atkins, n.; January 2018, s.v. Tommy, n.1.

Photo credit: John Warwick Brooke, 1916. Imperial War Museum. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

graduand

28 January 2026

Graduand is a rare but useful word. It refers to a student who has completed all the requirements for a degree but has yet to graduate. It is from the Medieval Latin graduandus, the gerundive form of the verb graduare, meaning to be graduated. It has its origins in Scottish English, and that is where most of its uses are to be found.

The earliest use I’ve found is in a classified ad in the Glasgow Herald of 7 September 1880:

GRADUAND. Prizetaker in almost every class, experienced, wishes Tutorship. French and German, besides ordinary subjects.

It merited an entry in the 1882 edition of Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary of the English Language:

Graduand (grad´ū-and), n. A student who has passed his examinations for a degree but has not yet been capped.

Note that the publisher of this dictionary, Blackie and Son, was originally a Glaswegian firm.

There is also this, from a 27 February 1892 letter published in the Glasgow Herald about examination standards at a local university:

In its application to the Faculty of Arts, this preliminary examination is so hedged about by conditions that it works out in this way. Every graduand must pass in English at the higher standard; must pass Latin, Greek, or Mathematics at the higher standard if he proposes to continue the study of these subjects respectively at the university and at the lower standard if he does not; in the remaining subjects, French, German, Italian, at the higher standard.

Graduand was never in widespread use, and while it can still occasionally be seen, its occurrence today is vanishingly rare.

(This is a revision of an older entry. Sometimes when I’m revising an old entry, especially one on an obscure word like this one, I wonder what my motivation was for originally including it. But with graduand I noticed the date of the original entry, November 2015, and realized it was just after the defense of my PhD dissertation, but before I graduated the next spring. So I was a graduand at the time. Someone, probably my PhD advisor, must have used the word, prompting me to look it up.)

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Sources:

“Graduand” (classified ad). Glasgow Herald, 7 September 1880, 2/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, new edition, vol. 2 of 4. John Ogilvie and Charles Annandale, eds. London: Blackie and Son, 1882, s.v. graduand, n. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“The New University Ordinances” (letter, 27 February 1892). Glasgow Herald, 29 February 1892, 12/1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1900, s.v. graduand, n.

Photo credit: McElspeth, 2018. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

cardigan / raglan / balaclava

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Richard Caton Woodville, 1894, oil on canvas. Lord Cardigan (center) leading the catastrophic charge

26 January 2026

The Crimean War (1853–56), fought between the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Russia, gave rise to the names of three types of clothing still commonly worn today, the cardigan sweater, the balaclava helmet, and the raglan sleeve. Two are named for generals who were perhaps better fashion designers than military commanders, and the third is named for a battle fought during the war.

A cardigan is a knitted sweater (jumper for you Brits) with an open front secured with buttons. It is named for James Brudenell, the seventh earl of Cardigan (1797–1868), who rose to infamy by leading the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854. While generally considered an incompetent officer, Cardigan did at least one thing right during the war, that is advocating that warm clothing be supplied to his men. He frequently wore this type of sweater—the style long predates the name—and his name became associated with it.

The earliest reference in print to Cardigan’s name being applied to sweaters comes at the end of the Crimean War in Philadelphia, indicating that the name had become popular enough to cross the Atlantic by that date. Peterson’s Magazine of March 1856 included a tip for knitting cardigans:

One other instruction may be useful; namely, that from passing from one round to another in open patterns, such as mats, cardigans, &c., generally the thread is broken off at the end of every round.

A man wearing raglan-sleeved shirt

Raglan is the name for a style of sleeve that is sewn from the neck rather than from the shoulder, creating larger armholes. It is named for FitzRoy Somerset, the first baron Raglan, who commanded British forces in Crimea. As a junior officer, he had lost his right arm during the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Following that war, he invented this style of sleeve to make it easier for him to dress himself. He was raised to the peerage and created Baron Raglan in 1852, and during the Crimean War the style of sleeve he had invented became widely known and used.

The earliest use of raglan in reference to the clothing style that I’ve found is a mention of Raglan Cape in a London tailor’s advertisement of 19 March 1854:

Among the various costumes represented will be found—the New Uniform of the Militia Artillery, the Raglan Cape, the Cavendish Morning Coat, the Wellesley Overcoat, the Errol Riding Habit, Scotch and Spanish Costumes for Children, and variety of styles for Morning and Evening wear.

Raglan, who was in poor health, died during the siege of Sevastopol in 1855. (Before the twentieth century, more soldiers died of disease than in battle.)

A woman wearing a balaclava

The third name for an item of clothing that comes from the Crimean war is the balaclava. It is a knitted headgear that traditionally exposes only the face. In later usage, however, the name has also come to encompass ski masks that cover the entire head, leaving only holes for the eyes and mouth. It is, of course, named for the Battle of Balaclava.

While soldiers during the Crimean War wore this style of headgear, the name isn’t applied to it until another war, the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80). The earliest use of balaclava applied to the headgear that I’ve found is from the Indian Daily News of 13 December 1878:

It has been suggested that many ladies might be glad to devote some of the leisure time to making useful articles for the soldiers now in Afghanistan [...] The articles most appreciated are woollen [sic] Balaclava cap [sic], mittens, and vests.

[…]

P. S.—As it may not be generally known, directions for making the Balaclava cap are appended.

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Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2021, s.v. cardigan, n.; March 2023, s.v. raglan, n.; 1933, s.v. Balaclava, n.

Sparks, J. B. “Christmas Gifts for Soldiers in Afghanistan.” Indian Daily News (Kolkata), 13 December 1878, 23/2. British Newspaper Archive.

Stephens, Ann S. “Additional Hints in Crochet.” Peterson’s Magazine (Philadelphia), March 1856, 253/2. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society.

“To Tailors, Drapers, &c.” (advertisement). Weekly Dispatch (London), 19 March 1854, 188/4. British Newspaper Archive.

Image credits: “Charge of the Light Brigade,” Richard Caton Woodville, 1894, Palacio Real de Madrid, Wikimedia Commons, public domain image; raglan, Spreadshirt, 2014, Flickr.com, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; balaclava, Tobias "ToMar" Maier, 2019, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.