Blackball

When someone is blackballed, they are banned from being a member of a group, organization, or association or not allowed to participate in an event or activity. Blackballing is a form of exclusion that is agreed to by the majority making the decision regarding the blackballing.

It was just a few weeks back when U.S. Representative (Minnesota) and presidential hopeful Dean Phillips claimed to the media that he was being shut down in his political efforts. He claimed Biden’s people were trying to change how voters perceived him, hoping to demolish his image of being a person of principle competency thereby solidifying his image as a kook.

In an interview he gave Michael Schaffer, senior editor and columnist for POLITICO Magazine, the journalist wrote this:

The Minnesota congressman attributes the cold shoulder to influence from a Biden campaign that he accuses of using access to pressure the media into blackballing an opponent. He says it points to something undemocratic at the heart of the Democratic Party.

It’s the kind of thing that has been claimed in political circles for years already. In the Northern Star of Lismore, New South Wales, in an article published on 5 April 1913, on page 5, the headline read:

BLACKBALLED: Ethics of London Clubs

The first paragraph began thusly:

The sensation recently created in political circles in London by the blackballing at the Reform Club of Baron de Forst, Liberal M.P. for West Ham, was emphasised by the fact that Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, nominated him for membership. As an expression of their feeling at the blackballing of the Liberal M.P., Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lloyd George have resigned.

But blackballing isn’t restricted only to politics although there is always a certain amount of politics when it comes to the sports world. Former football quarterback Colin Kaepernick (born 3 November 1987) played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League (NFL) starting in 2011. But in 2016, he knelt during the national anthem at the start of NFL games as his way of supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

On 3 March 2017, Colin Kaepernick opted out of his contract and announced he was a free agent in time for the start of the 2017 league year which began the following week. Things didn’t go as he had planned, and he went unsigned and there was a lot of media attention that followed.

By 23 March 2017, the story of Colin Kaepernick being blackballed was being picked up by journalists such as Kevin B. Blackstone of the Washington Post and ESPN panelist who wrote an article titled, “The NFL Has Effectively Blackballed Colin Kaepernick.” He ended his article with this:

Unless and until Kaepernick is back in the league under a contract commensurate with his résumé, blackballing is football’s payback.

Back in 2005, CNN reported on August 5th that things were not going well between CNET reporters and Google. CNET reported the previous Friday that “[QUOTE] Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.” The thing is, CNET reporters, in order to prove a point about Google, had used the Google search engine to find personal information about Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt.

And then CNET published that personal information.

The news story ran with the title, “CNET: We’ve Been Blackballed By Google.” As one can see, publishing personal information did not go all that well for all CNET reporters for a year.

The word showed up in cartoon strips, including a segment of Juliet Jones by Stan Drake in the Washington (DC) Evening Star edition of 8 June 1963.

On 23 July 1939, This Week Magazine published another edition containing 12 short stories including “Hot Embers” by Bertram Baynes (B. B.) Fowler (11 July 1893 – June 1981) and illustrated by John Ford (J.F.) Clymer (29 January 19097 – 2 November 1989). It was the story of “A Spanish hero betrayed to his death. An American unjustly accused — and helpless. An exciting story of war’s grim aftermath.” In this installment, the following dialogue between Petersen and Bill.

“The way you tell it,” Petersen commented, “it doesn’t sound a damned bit better.”

Bill shrugged. “I guess arguing about it will never get us anywhere. I’m through. That means I’m through with the newspaper business. Getting kicked out under these circumstances will blackball me in every office.”

Petersen said nothing. He just watched Bill walk toward the door. His eyes were coldly remorseless.

The Jewish Outlook magazine was a weekly journal published in Denver (CO). On the first page of the 24 August 1906 edition, they led with a story titled, “Is There Reason to Apprehend Anti-Semitism in this Country?” written by Simon Wolf. It took on the topic of discrimination and prejudice in America as well as abroad beginning with the factual accounts of those who either were Jews or who had married Jews, and for whom the excuse for holding them back in advancement was tied directly to that fact.

It mentioned Mordecai Manuel (M.M.) Noah (14 July 1785 – 22 May 1851) who was recalled as consul from Tunis by James Monroe because the foreign government objected to having a Jew as the American representative in their country. It mentioned Commodore Uriah P. Levy (22 April 1792 – 26 March 1862), who as targeted for court-martialing on more than one occasion, mostly because other officers did not want a Jew in their mess hall. It mentioned Mr. (Anthony) Keiley of Richmond who was Catholic but because he was married to a Jew, Austria refused to accept him as the American representative in their country. The situation at hand was one to which the writer spoke eloquently.

In other words, what I wish to convey and affirm is that there is absolutely no well-grounded or well-founded belief of opinion in the United States against the Jew as a citizen, politically or officially. The social ostracism is something that you cannot battle against nor prevent. Club organizations blackball persons on account of their race rather than against their religion. The secret societies of the universities and colleges blackball their colleagues, no matter of what eminence, if they do not socially like them, and no amount of reprimand or rules or regulations can prevent this ridiculous practice on the part of sons of upstart millionaires. The Jewish young men will carry off first honors, but cannot have the doubtful honor of associating with the less intellectual and moral students.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE 1: Mordecai Manuel Noah is recognized as the first Jew born in America who reached national prominence. He was appointed as consul at Riga in 1811, and he was then nominated two years later as consul to the Kingdom of Tunis (Tunisia). He was called back on 25 April 1815 by then U.S. Secretary of State James Monroe because, according to James Madison, Noah’s religion was “[QUOTE] an obstacle to the exercise of Consular function [END QUOTE].” This led to Noah reaching out to the White house repeatedly to ask why his religion was a justifiable reason for taking the position from him but he never received a legitimate response to his queries.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE 2: Uriah Phillips Levy was the first Jewish Commodore in the U.S. Navy, and his grandfather, who had moved to America from Germany in 1756, fought against the British during the American Revolution. Uriah Phillips Levy fought in the Barbary Wars and served on the U.S.S. Argus during the War of 1812. He was also a major philanthropist to Jewish causes in America.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE 3: Anthony Michael Keiley (12 September 1833 – 27 January 1905), a distinguished Virginian who served as a member of the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates as well as the mayor of Richmond for a period of time, was appointed as Envoy-Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Italian Government on 30 March 1885 by President Grover Cleveland. His wife, Rebecca Davis, was the daughter of a prominent Peterburg couple, and despite the Catholic Church forbidding Catholics to marry Jews, the Catholic Church gave special dispensation for the couple as long as they promised to raise any children from the union as Catholics.

ODD SIDE NOTE 1: On 27 January 1905, while visiting Paris (France), Anthony Keiley was struck by a motor car on the Place de la Concorde, and he became the city’s first automobile fatality.

The Los Angeles Herald newspaper of 04 March 1892 shared insight in their Woman’s World column about clubs titled, “A Woman’s Duty Regarding Acquaintances in Her Favorite Club.” Right off the top, the topic of blackballing was mentioned.

There is one question which often causes dissension in clubs, and that is the right to blackball and the cases where it is proper to exercise this right. Of course the latter will vary with the size and nature of the organization. Some societies do not permit the use of the blackball. They employ instead the services of an investigating committee, who make inquiries into the record of the person proposed for membership and report upon her eligibility. This would seem to be merely a shifting of responsibility from the governing committee, or club, to the investigating committee, and would not appear to be a sufficient substitute for the blackball in an organization of a social nature.

This hints that blackballing evolved from voting, and indeed, it does. In the book “Travellers’ Club” by Charles Dickens and published in 1879, the fairness of someone being blackballed is very clearly explained.

The members elect by ballot. When 12 and under 18 members ballot, one black ball, if repeated, shall exclude; if 18 and upwards ballot, two black balls exclude, and the ballot cannot be repeated. The presence of 12 members is necessary for a ballot.

In the Weekly North Carolina newspaper of 21 July 1852 published in Raleigh (NC), there was a lengthy reporting on a situation earlier that month in Greensborough between antebellum Governor David Settle Reid (19 April 1813 – 19 June 1891) and Mr. John Kerr Jr. (10 February 1811 – 5 September 1879). As with politics in the 21st century, there seemed to be a lot of mud-flinging and misrepresentation going on from a number of people, politicians, pundits, and newspapers.

From the commencement it seems to have been the aim, as it unquestionably has been the practice, of that paper, to blackball both Democrats and Whigs who may chance to stand in its way. Hence its slanderous epithets are dealt out without stint or measure. Friends or foes, it matters not; for who shall despite the authority of this organ to command and dictate? If Democrats do so, they are denounced as “dirty demagogues.” If Whigs do so, because they do not like Mr. Kerr’s shuffling and duplicity or General Scott’s affiliation with Sewarism or Greelyism, they are promptly thrust into heresy and insignificances — called “locofocos in disguise,” and must submit, at every peril, to receive the Register’s lash upon their backs.

Novelist Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a novelist and the Earl of Beaconsfield as well as a Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He wrote “Vivien Grey” which was published in 1826 when he was 21 years old. In Book IV, Chapter 1, he wrote this:

“Let us order our horses, Cleveland, round to the Piccadilly gate, and walk through the Guards. I must stretch my legs. That bore, Horace Buttonhole, captured me in Pall Mall East, and has kept me in the same position for upwards of half an hour. I shall make a note to blackball him at the Athenaeum. How is Mrs. Cleveland?”

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 4: In 1875, the Khedive of Egypt went bankrupt and because of that, they decided to sell shares in the Suez Canal. Benjamin Disraeli purchased 44% of the total shares available. He was also the first and only Jewish Prime Minister in the UK to date.

Miles Peter Andrews, an 18th-century English playwright, gunpowder manufacturer, and politician representing Bewdley in the House of Commons in England, wrote the comedic “Better Late Than Never” which was produced at Drury Lane in 1790. The word appears in two instances in the play, and in both cases, it is not complimentary. The first is this:

Too late for such kindness—a day after the fair, Eh, Master Blackball.

And the second is this:

Eh, Master Blackball — No more Sophas — done with peep bo.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 5: Peep bo in England was the name of the game for young children in whcih one person hid his or her face, and upon revealing it suddenly, cried out, “Peep bo.” It first came into use in the 1650s, with satirical poet and Presbyterian minister, Robert Wild (1617 – 1679) — who was referred to by Royal Society linguist and Scholar Christopher Wase as a “scarlet staine of Divinity” — using the expression in his writings beginning in 1660.

Andre Dacier published “Plutarch’s Lives” in 1737, and on page 396 of Volume 1, the word appears in the sense of voting. It would appear those who voted decided to exclude the accused from living.

… black ball instead of the white.” When, afterwards, he was told that the assembly had pronounced judgment of death against him, all he said was, ” I will make them feel that I am alive.”

In Volume 24 of “Dramatic Library” published in 1700, on page 7 the word is found.

… blackball’d at the Coterie last Thursday, and prudence and chastity voted in.

While Idiomation was unable to find earlier published instances of the word as it refers to ostracizing someone, that it would appear in a book in the 1700s indicates it was in use and understood by the general population. This means the word had to be used during the late 1600s for it to be used as a written word by 1700.

Private Eye

A private eye is an individual who undertakes investigations for his or her clients outside of what law enforcement agencies may undertake. A private eye gathers information, analyzes data, uncovers evidence, and provides detailed reports to his or her clients for legal, financial, and/or personal matters. What a private eye cannot do is break the law in order to gather information.

In the Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court, in Volume III, with regards to Case Number 12597 which was decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the expression private eye appeared a number of times. This case was decided on in the October term of 1952, in the case of Australian-born American union leader Harry Renton Bridges (28 July 1901 – 30 March 1990) born Alfred Renton Bryant Bridges, Henry Schmidt and J.R. Robertson v United States of America. In the testimony of John H. Schomaker, the following was recorded:

His eyes rolled and he went back, and I said, “Who do you represent?” I didn’t think a brilliant like Mr. Halliman would hire a clown like this to ask me a question, “Is he a Communist?” when I haven’t seen the guy for five years. So I began to ask him a question. I said, “Who are you? Are you one of these private eyes?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Do you handle divorce cases?”
He said, “Yes, I handle divorce cases.”
I said, “You are like this guy Moulton in San Jose.”
He said, “Yes, that’s me.”

And then again here:

I said, “Brother, it is about time you are learning if you want to make a wage as a private eye.”
He said, “I make a good living as a private detective.”
As I say, it was the screwiest thing I ever heard in my life. I didn’t know whether I was batty or he, the way the thing went on.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: J.R. (Bob) Robertson and Henry Schmidt, were the witnesses at Harry Bridges’ oath-of-citizenship ceremony. It was later determined that Harry Bridges had given false testimony during his naturalization proceedings. They were also officials of the Longshoremen’s union, and were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government.

Josiah Allen’s Wife as a P.A. and P.I.: Samantha at the Centennial by American humorist and satirist Marietta Holley (16 July 1836 – 1 March 1926), author of My Opinions and Betsey Bobbets was published in Hartford, CT by the American Publishing Company in 1878. This made clear the connection between private eyes and private investigators. and since investigators back in the day were thought of as detectives, this also included the reference to private detectives.

And finally, afer givin’ it a half a moment’s thought, and meditatin’ it wasn’t nothin’ ag’inst my principles, and would please my companion, I consented to go as Josiah Allen’s wife, P.A. and P.I., which bein’ translated from the original means Promiscuous Advisor, and Private Investigator.

Back in the 1880s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was already well known. It was established in 1850 by Scottish immigrant, Allan Pinkerton (21 August 1819 – 1 July 1884), who was the former deputy sheriff of Cook County in Illinois. Branding his company, he chose to have a logo that featured a drawing of a sleepless eye, which many believe was the inspiration for the term private eye.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish abolitionist who fled Scotland in 1842 after learning there was a warrant out for his arrest, and he settled in America. He established a barrel-making shop that was also a stop that was part of the Underground Railroad. After apprehending coin counterfeiters by accident. and with assistance from the Kane County Sheriff, Luther Dearborn, Pinkerton rose in law enforcement and became Chicago’s first police detective. He was also an agent for the U.S. postal service.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 2: The Eye of Providence — the all-seeing eye enclosed in a triangle and surrounded by a halo — is featured on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States, and has been part of the Great Seal since 1782 (long before Allan Pinkerton was even born). Contrary to popular belief, the Eye of Providence does not prove the influence of Freemasonry in the founding of America and we know this because the Eye of Providence first appeared in Freemason iconography in 1797 (that’s 15 years after the creation of the Great Seal).

Later on, his brother, Robert Pinkerton, and Chicago attorney, Edward Rucker (1822 – 1872), joined him in business. The focus of the business was to provide a number of detective services, specializing in the capture of counterfeiters and train robbers. They also provided services as private military contractors as well as security and protection services.

The company thwarted an assassination plot against President-elect Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) in February of 1861 (known as the Baltimore Plot), solved the Adams Express Co. theft in 1866 where $700,000 USD had been stolen, and was known for strikebreaking at various mills and furnaces over the years.

INTERESTING NOTE 2: Robert Pinkerton, prior to joining his brother Allan in the detective business, was a railroad contractor who had established his own business called, “Pinkerton & Co.” When he joined his brother and Edward Rucker in their business venture, the company changed its name to Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

INTERESTING NOTE 3: While still in Scotland, Allan Pinkerton was involved in a movement for reforms that benefitted the working class. In essence, he fought on the side of unions for workers. A wave of strikes and riots led the arrest of those involved and one of those was Allen Pinkerton.

By the 1870s, the Pinkertons had added bounty hunters to their list of available for-hire services, and they began to hunt down outlaws such as the Reno Gang, the Wild Bunch, the Missouri Kid aka William Franklin Rudolph (21 January 1883 – 8 May 1905), the Sundance Kid aka Harry Longbaugh (1867 – 7 November 1908), and Frank (10 January 1843 – 18 February 1915) and Jesse James (5 September 1847 – 3 April 1882).

The confusion with the term is rife in the mid 1880s as private eye at that time was the opposite of the public eye. When a private eye was referenced it almost always meant that what was written was intended solely for the person to whom the written document was addressed, and not to be shared with anyone else.

As much as people will state they read or heard the expression private eye originated with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency because of the eye on their logo, the fact is that Idiomation could not prove or disprove that claim. Even the Pinkerton website claims to be the world’s first private eye but doesn’t lay claim to being responsible for the term. There are stories, however, told by Allan Pinkerton to newspaper men, where he claimed criminals feared him so badly they referred to him as “The Eye.” Who knows if those stories are true?

What we do know is that many insist that the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was the very first private detective business in the world and that honor actually goes to French soldier, privateer, and criminal Eugène-François Vidocq (24 July 1775 – 11 May 1857), who founded Le bureau des rensiegnments (Office of Intelligence) in 1833. He is also responsible for having introduced record-keeping, criminology, and ballistics to the field of criminal investigations. That’s not all though. He was the first to make plaster casts of shoe impressions at crime scenes, and to come up with indelible ink, and unalterable bond paper.

So where does this leave us in this investigation of the expression private eye of the investigating variety?

In the Nancy Drew mystery, The Mystery at Lilac Inn written by Mildred Wirt Benson (10 July 1905 – 28 May 2002), writing as Carolyn Keene, and published in October of 1930, Nancy Drew hopes to uncover the name of the impersonator who has been making expensive purchases under the name of her friend, Emily Willouby, owner of the Lilac Inn. Nancy doubles down on her efforts when Emily’s heirloom diamonds are stolen. In this book, readers find this:

Try to figure this one out, Miss Private Eye!

Sam Spade was from the very famous Dashiell Hammett (27 May 1894 – 10 January 1961) novel published in 1930 titled, The Maltese Falcon. He was the kind of detective that became the archetype detective outside of the confines of law enforcement in the 30s and 40s: Sharp-witted with a keen eye for detail, and the ability to navigate the maze of crime and corruption successfully. He was what was alternately referred to as a private eye, a private detective, and a private investigator aka a private I.

What we know of private detectives at the turn of the 20th century is that they were men who toiled in secret as evidenced by this in the 26 February 1903 edition of the Washburn Times newspaper.

The work of a private detective is one of the most peculiar means of earning a livelihood in the entire category of avocations pursued by civilized men. What is more, doubtless not one person in a thousand has the remotest idea of the character or significance of this most singular outgrowth of ultra civilized conditions.

And they weren’t particularly well liked or trusted as shown in this article from The Salt Lake Herald newspaper of 19 November 1895 which began with this:

It is almost a question for discussion which is the worse, private detective agencies or criminal gangs.

Even back in 1887, as seen in this news article of March 16th in the Semi-Weekly Miner newspaper of Butte (MT) in a piece entitled, “The Shoplifters: The Greet Need of a General Detectives Bureau” pointed out the perils of using private detectives.

Quite often arrests are made by mistake, and this is brought about solely on account of the detective’s ignorance of the people he is dealing with.

It is a rare thing for a Central office detective to make any such blunder. Unlike the private detective, he generally knows every shoplifter in the city, and a customer who is careless enough to carry a lace collar or a pair of gloves away from one of the counter towards the door, not to steal the article, but simply to see how it looks in daylight would not be grabbed by the arm and hurried off to the station house.

Based on these facts, the expression was understood by 1930 which means it was used sufficiently during the 1920s to be used in literature the following decade. Who used it first or where it was first published remains a mystery. however, and Idiomation hopes that some budding private eye will be able to track down the evidence needed to prove when the expression was first used and who was responsible.

Yellow Belly

If you remember the insult yellow belly coward, chances are good you watched more than a few old-time western movies or read books set in the Wild West. When someone uses the term yellow-belly, the person to whom they are referring is supposed to be easily afraid, and even though it’s a popular cowboy-themed insult, it’s still used these days.

Back in 2013, Seth MacFarlane co-wrote, “A Million Ways to Die in the West.” The Guardian newspaper in the UK reported that Sarah Silverman was also part of the cast, playing the part of a prostitute. Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson joined the cast as did Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, and Neil Patrick Harris.

The expression was used in the newspaper article describing MacFarlane’s character.

[Seth MacFarlane] will play a yellow-bellied chicken farmer who is forced to corral his courage when an outlaw terrorises his town.

The book East of Eden was written by John Steinbeck (27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968) and published in 1952. It was the story of two brothers, and examined the theme of the power of free will over fate. The story was similar in nature to the story of Cain and Abel. The book is considered to be Steinbeck’s most ambitious work among his 30 published books, and even Steinbeck felt the novel was his most important work as an author. In Chapter 54 of his book East of Eden, he included the expression.

He stared between his knees at the floor. “No,” he said, “that’s not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.”

His stomach contracted. “I haven’t got the courage. I’m a cowardly yellow belly. I couldn’t stand it.”

He went into the bathroom and measured three teaspoons of elixir of bromide into a glass and added water until the red medicine was pink. He carried the glass to the living room and put it on the table. He folded the telegram and shoved it in his pocket. He said aloud, “I hate a coward! God, how I hate a coward!” His hands were shaking and a cold perspiration dampened his forehead.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: While East of Eden is regarded as his most important work, Steinbeck’s most famous novel is The Grapes of Wrath which was published in 1939 and resulted in Steinbeck being award the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Of Steinbeck’s 30 published novels, 17 were made into television or studio movies, including East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. In all, Steinbeck received three Academy Award nominations for writing.

But back in merry olde England, in 1796, the term was used humorously when speaking about residents of Lincolnshire with no hint of it referring to being cowardly or afraid of anything. Their background of their regimental flag was yellow, and as luck would have it, the frogs in low-lying marshlands that were drained for agricultural purposes had yellow bellies.

INTERESTING NOTE 3: The difference between a bog and a fen (which is what the marshlands in Lincolnshire were) has to do with the water supply source. Bogs are enclosed depressions filled by rain water; fens enjoy a steady source of ground water.

So in 1796, when someone in England spoke of the yellow-bellies, it was with the same jovial way they spoke of redcoats.

Digging back a few more years, the term is found in A Provincial Glossary with a Collection of Local Proverbs by Francis Grose and published in 1787. It is listed with this definition:

Yellow bellies. This is an appellation given to persons born in the Fens, who, it is jocularly said, have yellow bellies, like their eels.

What this indicates is that sometime between 1787 and 1865 (when the period of the Wild West era began), and somewhere between England and America, the term went from being a teasing commentary to an insult.

A bit of insight is found on Page 3 of the Saturday, April 16, 1842 edition of The Wisconsin Enquirer (sometimes known as the Wiskonsan Enquirer) is found in this news article about Mexico’s invasion of Texas.

This article appeared in a great many newspapers, including the April 2, 1842 edition of The Radical in Bowling Green (Missouri) and the Bloomington Herald in Bloomington (Iowa) on April 8, 1842 among others, and they all owe their story to the original story published by the Galveston Civilian in Galveston (Texas) published on March 12, 1842. The article read in part as follows:

We learn from Capt. Wright, of the N. York, that it is the intention of the Texans to “keep dark” until the Mexicans cross the Colorado, and then give them a San Jacinto fight, with an army from 5000 to 7000 men. God send that they may bayonet every “yellow belly” in the Mexican army. Wonder if Houston will save Santa Anna a second time?

What happened is that Mexico had taken over San Antonio, and Samuel Houston (2 March 1793 – 26 July 1863) issued a Proclamation on March 10, 1842 that called Texans to arms. The Proclamation read as follows:

If war should come upon us, we will make it our business. We will be authorized to meet and pursue our enemies with vengeance They have forgotten the generosity with which they were treated when they were placed at the footstool of Texan mercy were saved when even humanity would have justified retributive vengeance Should Mexico again disregard the exalted principles of civilized and honorable warfare, they shall feel that avenging arm that shall take of them full recompense for oppression and cruelty! Texans can and will be free! They would prefer death to degradation, or the loss of their independence.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 4: The Santa Anna the article spoke of was Antonio López de Santa Anna who was born Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón (21 February 1794 – 21 June 1976) in the city of Jalapa, Veracruz. He modeled himself after the French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte and even went as far as to adopt the moniker of Napoléon of the West.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 5: Santa Anna was partly responsible for sparking the Texas Revolution when his brother in law, General Martin Perfecto de Cos sent 500 troops into Texas in August of 1835 and on to Gonzales in October of that year.

At the time the news article was published, it was reported that six hundred Texans were at Saguine with reinforcements going in so they would stand approximately a thousand men strong against the Mexican army.

Yellow belly was the Texas term for Mexican soldiers and the insult was based on the color of the Mexican soldiers’ uniforms. Between the harsh warning from Samuel Houston to Mexico’s army and how Texans felt about being invaded, it isn’t hard to understand how the term “yellow belly” came to be an insult.

What this indicates, however, is that there does not appear to be a link between the use of yellow belly in England and the use of yellow belly in America. What we do know is that in 1824, the expression was used with quotation marks so the insult was in its early stages getting established as an insult.

As Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, and in 1824 they were causing problems in Texas, Idiomation pegs the insult to sometime between 1821 and 1823.

On The Cuff

Recently an Idiomation subscriber mentioned how different on the cuff and off the cuff were from each other. What they knew of the idiom was that on the cuff meant free of charge or on credit. A quick check with established and well-known dictionaries confirmed such an expression exists and that it means just that (and is quite different from something that is off the cuff).

In the Norman Phillips (November 1921 – 28 June 2021) novel Throw A Nickel On The Grass published in 2012 and based on the true story of the author who became a decorated fighter pilot and rose to the rank of colonel, the idiom is used when speaking of the main character’s younger years. This excerpt uses the idiom and clearly demonstrates what it means.

Rick had seen a white jacket in Nate Fox’s window display, and now he could try one on and tell Nate to hold it for him. It needed a minor alteration that Nat wouldn’t do unless Rick made a five-dollar down payment. After wheedling Grandma, she advanced the five dollars, and Rick got the jacket in time for the prom. The white shoes were easy. Breller’s let him have the shoes on the cuff. He could pay for them later when he had the money.

French novelist, polemicist and physician, Louis-Ferdinand Céline whose real name was Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961) included it in his book Death on the Installment Plan which was a companion volume to his earlier novel, Journey to the End of the Night. Originally published in the mid-1930s (and republished in the 1970s), these two novels told the story of the author’s childhood growing up in the slums of Paris (France), and serving in WWI. It is said that Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s fiction was the forerunner of what became known as black humor.

The first ones to make a stink were the grocers on the rue Berce … They refused to give us any more food on the cuff … They came around with their bills … We heard them coming up … We didn’t answer …

As mentioned, the idiom was still very much in use at the time these novels were reprinted in the 1970s. In April of 1976, the Honorable Louis Arthur “Skip” Bafalis (28 September 1929 – ), a representative in Congress from the State of Florida, submitted this as his statement regarding food stamps and the cost to taxpayers with regards to the Peanut Act of 1976 at hearings before the Committee on Agriculture. In part, this is what he had to say on the matter.

We may see the day when for every American working hard and losing his shirt to the taxman, another American is living on the cuff.

When that day comes, and it could come, you will see a revolt — a middle American revolution. The working man is going to stop working. After all, what is he gaining for himself by working hard, if the taxman takes it all.

And when middle America quits working and paying taxes, a lot of those now living high on the cuff are going to get a rude awakening. Some may starve for they’ve forgotten how to work.

I know this sounds far-fetched. I hope it is. But I am afraid it could happen.

This indicates that the English version of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s book was not a bad translation from the French version. The idiom was known to those who spoke English.

A decade earlier, the Business Review of April 1960 saw one of its articles titled, “$52 Billion On The Cuff: How Burdensome is Consumer Credit?” included in the Consumer Credit Labeling Bill of 1960. The article began by stating that slightly less than $52 billion dollars of outstanding consumer credit was outstanding, not including mortgages, and there was concern that, with the fast rise in consumer credit since the end of WWII in 1945, the situation could negatively impact the housing economy and mortgage markets not dissimilar to what happened in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.

In 1942, the expression was used in the discussion of the purchase of old vessels and the sale of new vessels from the Waterman Steamship Corporation under section 509 of the Merchant Marine Act, and dating back to 8 June 1940. The Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries was led by the Chairman Schuyler Otis Bland (4 May 1872 – 16 February 1950) of Virginia, and included, among others, Herbert Covington Bonner (16 May 1891 – 7 November 1965) of North Carolina, James Hardin Peterson (11 February 1894 – 28 March 1978) of Florida, investigator for the Washington D.C. office of General Accounting Harry S. Barger (26 September 1882 – 1954), General Counsel James Vincent Hayes (1900 – 13 May 1985), The debate includes this exchange of words.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think wherever it is used it ought to be borne in mind that it has an invidious meaning whenever used in any public document.

MR. BONNER: What does on the cuff mean?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes; what does on the cuff mean?

MR. BARGER: These are expressions used in the memorandum.

MR. BONNER: Does it mean a private understanding between people?

MR. BARGER: It could, Mr. Congressman. I would rather not interpret it.

MR. PETERSON: Let us read that little portion again.

MR. HAYES: What Mr. Peterson desired to have read was the on the cuff reference back of that.

MR. BARGER: The first clause is “Neither implied nor on the cuff understandings with respect to the purchase of old vessels from Water –“

MR. HAYES: What is the beginning of that sentence?

MR. BARGER: The whole sentence?

MR. HAYES: Yes.

MR. BARGER: It begins with the word “Neither.”

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: The only vessel of the C3-S-DX1 design, SS Schuyler Otis Bland was the final vessel ordered by the U.S. Maritime Commission, and the first vessel launched by the newly-created Maritime Administration. The vessel’s name honored the late U.S. Representative Schuyler Otis Bland of Virginia, sponsor of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. During construction, however, the vessel was surpassed by the C4-S-1A “Mariner” design and Schuyler Otis Bland was the only vessel built. The ship was ready for service in July 1951 and chartered to American President Lines for which it completed two globe-encircling journeys while engaging in commercial trade. Transferred to the U.S. Navy on August 4, 1961, the ship provided logistical support during the Vietnam War, until struck from the Naval Vessel Register on August 15, 1979. (Source: US Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration)

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Herbert Covington Bonner rose to the position of chairman of the House Marine and Fisheries Committee and was dubbed the father of the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the Savannah. He was well known for backing the social programs of the Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations, and was an original member of the House on UnAmerican Activities Committee.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: James Hardin Peterson helped to draft the G.I. Bill of Rights, and was instrumental in making the Florida Everglades into a national park. He and Lawton Mainor Chiles (3 April 1930 – 12 December 1998) worked as law partners until the late 1960s (Chiles went on to be a Senator from 1971 through 1989 and then the governor of Florida from 1991 through to 1998), after which time, he practiced on his own.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 4: James Vincent Hayes was an anti-trust lawyer who graduated from Fordham Law School and went into practice in 1926. He became the assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York before he was appointed special assistant to the United States Attorney General in 1938.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 5: In 1944, Harry S. Barger’s boss was John Joseph Sirica (19 March 1904 – 14 August 1992) who is best remember for being the Federal district judge at the trial of the Watergate burglars in the 1970s. Judge Sirica was nicknamed “Maximum John” because he was known for handing out tough sentences.

At this point, things get obscured. While it’s true that on the cuff referred to placing something on credit or getting something for free and was reportedly a popular slang expression in the 1920s and 1930s, especially among flappers, this doesn’t mean it is the same thing as what was meant at the end of the 19th century in the U.S., where the practice of penciling debts in shops and bars on celluloid cuffs was very real. Just because something appears to have a connection does not mean the connection can be proven.

In 1942, Looney Tunes put out a cartoon titled, Eatin’ On The Cuff where the moth eats his fill at everyone else’s expense (which is definitely in keeping with the meaning of the idiom). For your enjoyment and courtesy of YouTube, here’s that cartoon!

In Volume 133 of Bankers Magazine published in 1936, the subject of using credit to pay for holidays was addressed. The idiom found its way into the article thusly:

But like all sports and all vacations … it takes money. A skimpy vacation, one you ‘put on the cuff‘ is like sailing with a dragging anchor. No matter how much fun, there is still a reckoning. Let’s be smart and do it all beforehand.

In the August 1930 edition of Boys’ Life, there was a story about newspapermen and how one the Chicago Herald’s ace cameraman, Connie Layor, had been fired in front of all his colleagues despite the fact he had an exclusive shot at breaking a story about a man named Darucci who was on trial in Judge Cardigan’s court along with three other men who had been arrested with him and charged with various crimes. Bay McCue was a recent addition to the staff reporters, and had met up with Connie Layor at the court house. The short story by Alvin E. Rose and illustrated by Frank Spradling (1885 – 18 August 1972) was titled, The Man in the Door.

“You can’t tell. It might have helped a little, enough maybe have got us a lay-off instead of a permanent vacation without pay,” McCue moaned disconsolately.

“You don’t know the ‘old man,'” Layor growled. “Be quiet! I don’t feel socially inclined.”

“But I’m broke, Connie,” said McCue, “and, come to think of it, hungry. You couldn’t put me on the cuff for a few bucks, could you?”

Layor reached mechanically into his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

“Thanks, Santa, “McCue brightened; “haven’t got a job in the other pocket, have you?”

Although Idiomation was unable to find an earlier published version of this idiom, clearly in 1930 it was an expression understood by young readers of Boys’ Life and, as claimed by numerous dictionaries, it appears to be an expression from the 1920s. It also explains why the Senators (who were middle aged men at the time) struggled with the idiom’s meaning in 1942, and why Bankers Magazine used the idiom in quotation marks in 1936.

Baloney

Bologna is a large city in Northern Italy. Bologna (pronounced baloney) is also a processed meat that is a combination of ground pork, beef, chicken, and turkey. So where does baloney — as in nonsense, rubbish, or foolishness — come from and is it somehow related to the city or the processed meat?

The Herald newspaper of Everett (WA) published a story on 28 May 2009 about the Twitter account held by cwalken that was suspended due to strange activity. Some believed the account was that of American actor Christopher Walken but it wasn’t. The photo that accompanied the account name was that of Christopher Walken, but the Twitter account wasn’t that of the actor. The article was titled, “That Famous Twitter Feed Could Be Baloney.”

As a reminder, Twitter verification was introduced in June 2009 and became Twitter’s way to distinguish real celebrity accounts from unverified celebrity accounts. Twitter closed down Twitter verification requests in 2017 but after a four-year absence, as of May of 2021, Twitter has reinstated it.

University of California Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson (18 June 1940 – 2 November 2019) wrote “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds” which was published in 1997. The title to Chapter Three was “Tuning Up Your Baloney Detector.” This chapter spoke about the need, even in science, to suspect baloney in claims that appear to be easily debunked. He stated that Carl Sagan’s own baloney detecting kit was instrumental in directing the scientist to quickly identify con artists and conspiracy theorists who purported to be all about the science.

What we need to protect ourselves from such false beliefs, Sagan writes in his book, “The Demon-Haunted World” is a well-equipped “baloney detector kit” A baloney detector is simply a good grasp of logical reasoning and investigative procedure.

In 1979, the United States Department of Agriculture published “What’s to Eat? and Other Questions Kids Ask About Food.” According to the Foreword, it was written mostly because 1979 was designated as the International Year of the Child by the United Nations, and it was felt that publishing a kid friendly book would be the thing to do that year.

Among the contents was an article titled, “Truth or Baloney About Oranges.” There were two sets of questions — one about growing oranges and the other about processing oranges — comprising of 5 statements each to which readers were to check one of two boxes: Truth or Baloney. The quiz was followed by a diagram showing the correct answers.

In “The Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1958” published by the United States Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, the matter of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee River component of the Ohio River was a hot matter of discussion. The Tennessee River system at the time contributed to the floods on the Ohio River. Money had been borrowed by the TVA, and was being repaid to the Treasury Department. Senator Joseph Landon Evins (24 October 1920 – 31 March 1984) of Tennessee claimed the total repayments up until 1958 had far exceeded the 40-year statutory annual requirements, but some senators didn’t believe that was an accurate representation of the situation.

MR. JENSEN: You can cut it any way you want to, but it is still baloney, Mr. Evins. It is still baloney to me.

MR. EVINS: It happens to be a fact — a true fact. I am sure the gentleman would consider anything TVA as baloney, but what I have given him are the true facts of the situation. TVA has paid back into the Treasury more than would be required by interest payments.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Joseph Landon Evins was named a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in 1935 and rose to the position of the Federal Trade Commission Assistant Secretary in 1938. He held that position until the U.S. entered WWII where he was commissioned in the United States Army Judge Advocate General Corps where he served until 1946, at which time he returned to private practice. He was a Senator from 1953 through to 1977.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Senator Evins was preceded by Senator Albert Gore Sr, the father of Senator Al Gore Jr who went on to become Vice-President of the United States of America under President Bill Clinton.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Benton Franklin Jensen (16 December 1892 – 5 February 1970) was the Senator from Iowa served thirteen consecutive terms as the U.S. Representative from Iowa. Before being elected to the House of Representatives, he managed a lumber company for twenty years. Prior to that he was a second lieutenant in WWI, and before that he was a yardman and an assistant auditor at a lumber company.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 2: He was shot in the back near his right shoulder on 1 March 1954 in Washington DC when four Puerto Rican nationalists — Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodriguez — promoting the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence from the US fired 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols onto the legislative floor from the visitors’ balcony above.

It seems that baloney was a favored word if one goes by government documents. It was repeated several times in the “National Labor Relations Act: Hearings Before the Special Committee” in 1940 where a clear definition is provided by attorney Edmund M. Toland. On Saturday, 27 April 1940 Edmund M. Toland, general counsel to the Congressional Committee investigating the National Labor Relations Board and Herbert Fuchs (20 September 1905 – 1988), attorney for the National Labor Relations Board sprinkled their comments liberally with the word.

MR. TOLAND: Notwithstanding the fact that the charge against this company was a violation of section 8 (2), that it had sponsored, dominated, or instigated, or all of the violations of section 8 (2) with respect to this union, and this witness, being called by the respondent, after being cross-examined by the Board, then the attorney for the independent union questions him, and asks him whether or not the company had ever interfered with, dominated, or sponsored the organization so are as he knew, and his answer was “none whatever” and you took that testimony as to be immaterial to the issues in this case, and therefore concluded that the testimony of this witness, under oath, was baloney!

MR. FUCHS: Oh, I don’t think I intended to characterize it as untrue. You might get a lot of people to testify that they hadn’t seen one person kill another.

The use of the word baloney was used a number of times by both Edmund M. Toland and Herbert Fuchs.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: Herbert Oscar Fuchs was a former American Communist who joined the National Labor Relations Board in 1937. In November 1948 he left the National Labor Relations Board over the increased attention being paid to the Alger Hiss (11 November 1904 – 14 November 1996) and Whittaker Chambers (1 April 1901 – 9 July 1961) case.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 3: Whittaker Chambers was a senior editor at Time magazine and in August 1948, he testified under subpoena before the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee that Alger Hiss, who had worked as an attorney for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration as well as the Nye Committee before moving to the Department of State in 1936, was a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Back in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a plan to go off the gold standard. The Depression wasn’t letting up and inflation was only making matters worse. The passage of the Gold Reserve Act allowed the Federal Reserve to increase the amount of money in circulation to the level the economy needed, but not before New York Governor Alfred Emmanuel Smith (30 December 1873 – 04 October 1944), took to the newspapers with an open letter to the New York State Chamber of Commerce. In his letter he wrote:

I am for gold dollars as against baloney dollars. I am for experience as against experiment.

The government was concerned citizens would use the term baloney dollars instead of the high-sounding term compensated dollars. Senator George Norris of Nebraska tried to offset the damage by stating to the media, “Even baloney is pretty good food for a starving individual.”

During the 1936 presidential, Governor Smith backed Roosevelt’s opponent with the memorable refrain, “No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.”

But was the governor the first to talk about baloney that way? Not at all.

Idiomation found a joke of sorts in Volume 99, Issue 2275 of The Judge published on 6 June 1926.

HE: I love your eyes with their lustrous rays focused lovingly into mine.

SHE: Baloney; those are just words, nothing more.

HE (very much put out): What did you expect them to be? Sandwiches?

It was attributed to a publication recognized as the Texas Ranger.

Throughout the 1920s, newspaper comic strips American engineer, inventor, author, sculptor and cartoonist, Reuben Garrett Lucius “Rube” Goldberg (4 July 1883 – 7 December 1970) featured wonderfully complicated mechanical contraptions. They also often included the word baloney to mean nonsense as in “that’s the baloney” or “it’s a lot of baloney” or just plain old “baloney” all on its own.

The word was found used with ease in this published letter in the Vaudeville newspaper dated 30 June 1922.

Idiomation was unable to find any earlier published versions of baloney meaning nonsense, rubbish, or foolishness. It is therefore pegged at the beginning of the flapper era even though baloney as a prepared meat sausage was available long before then.

Off The Hook

Imagine this scenario: You are in a room when someone says or does something wrong, unlawful, awkward, or unpleasant. No one calls that person out on what has been said or done. Everyone has let that person off the hook. Yes, when someone is let off the hook, they are free of blame or trouble that might have otherwise come from their actions.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: In rap culture, off the hook means something that is exciting, out of control, or that has been extremely well executed, and is usually in reference to a performance or party. Most people, however, do not use this idiom in that sense.

For example, on 16 April 2019, the Hartford Courant newspaper reported on Hartford’s $573 Million dollar city budget which included funding a tree planting program, a rodent control program, increased school funding, more police officers, and more. The newspaper reported the city was both off and on the hook.

Hartford is off the hook in terms of paying back money the city borrowed for infrastructure projects and other reasons because of a deal struck two years ago where the state agreed to pay off the city’s $550 million in general obligation debt.

The city is on the hook for payments related to the construction of Dunkin’ Donuts Park, which cost nearly $72 million.

All kinds of people from the very poor to the very powerful have been let off the hook over the years. In Volume 1 of “The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act of 1987: Committee on the Budget” it was reported that when Amendment No. 631 was being discussed that Senator Lawton Mainor Chiles Jr. (April 3, 1930 – December 12, 1998) used the expression his comments.

Mr. President, I just want to say in the same vein that my distinguished colleague from North Dakota has asked about the $150 billion. I think that we should look at why the administration would support the Domenici version. I think it is because it tends to let them off the hook on the deficit.

On 31 July 1987 in “The Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt – G-R-H” Mr. Johnston began with commenting on the amendment proposed by Mr. Gramm et al and what he felt the amendment was intended to do.

What I find is that this amendment really takes the White House off the hook. It is the take-the-White-House-off–the–hook amendment, or you might call it the sweep-it-under-the-run amendment, or you might call it pin the tail on the Democrats.

Later on, Senator Ernest Frederick “Fritz” Hollings (1 January 1922 – 6 April 2019) from South Carolina was reported as saying to the Presiding Officer, Mr. Breaux.

Arriving here on the floor, I listened to the Senator from Louisiana saying we are letting the President off the hook.

I am astounded. Of course, I’ve been trying to get him on the hook. If it were possible, I would have long since done it.

I thought we found a way last June when we had the House-Senate conference on the budget. The distinguished Senator Louisiana agreed to the conference report. We had to voice vote it late that evening. The Senator from Ohio, Senator Glenn, and I, paired on the floor there around midnight, objecting because the assumptions, the economic projections were all kiltered in favor of letting the President and the Congress off the hook.

Truth be told, the senators made quite a bit of use of the idiom which, of course, is how politics happens it would seem.

The 5 May 1947 edition of Life magazine published an article titled, “The Racing Racket” written by well-known and respected New York newsman Earl Brown (1903 – 1980). The focus of the article was on how the only winners when betting on horse races were the track-owners, crooked horsemen, and grafting bookies. It even stated that political machines and police officers protected bookies from the law, and track officials looked the other way when the public was robbed on fixed races. They weren’t pointing fingers only at New York, but Chicago and Kansas City as well as other locations around the U.S.

Occasionally all of a bookmaker’s customers, acting on mass instinct, will bet on the same horse in a race. Or some wealthy customer, feeling a strong hunch, will place a bet of gigantic size. Or a crooked horse-owner or jockey will overload the book with bets on a “Sure thing.” Whenever this happens, the bookmaker stands to be wiped out at one blow if a certain horse wins. Some way or other he has to get off the hook by “betting off” some of the money he holds.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Virginia native Earl Brown became a political activist, and was known for his battles with legendary Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. Before entering politics, he was the managing editor of the New York Amsterdam News, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, and a Life magazine editor.

“The Trial of Mary Dugan” was made into a movie in 1929, but before that it was a successful Broadway play about a Broadway showgirl charged with murder in the knifing death of her wealthy lover. Her brother Jimmy is a newly licensed attorney who defends her. The Time magazine review of 20 February 1925 implies the idiom has related to fishing.

The Trial of Mary Dugan —A blooming blonde from the Follies wriggles OFF THE HOOK of murder in the first degree.

While it became more and more difficult to find published examples of the idiom, it was found in a number of newspapers in August of 1909 in article about an unnamed London music hall belle who had successfully “landed” a mature wealthy nobleman and who, at about the same time, had sued a music hall manager for non-payment of wages. She won her case against the music hall manager, and to add insult to injury (or so she hoped), she sent a nice selection of congratulatory telegrams to the music hall manager.

Some of the comments were “Good for you, old girl” and “Congratulations on your splendid haul!” One telegram event stated: “Don’t let him off the hook.”

As an added note, the music hall manager left it up to patrons of his establishment to determine if the telegrams regarding the engagement kerfuffle was about her professional or matrimonial engagement. Unfortunately for him, the article advised readers there was another action for damages against the manager pending.

Idiomation found a great many articles in newspapers from the 1890s about ships and whales being found off the Hook, meaning Sandy Hook in New York state.

Idiomation also found that off the hook should never be confused with off the reel which means something completely different but which many also assume is an idiom connected to fishing. Neither of these idioms are.

According to the “Dictionary of Idiomatic English Phrases” compiled by Professor of English Literature in the Imperial University of Japan and Scottish author, James Main Dixon, M.A. F.R.S.E. (1856 – 27 September 1933) and published in 1891, to be off the hook meant to be in disorder or flurried.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: James Main Dixon was the secretary of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo (Japan) from 1879 to 1886, and a professor of English at the Imperial University of Japan from 1886 through to 1892.

He then moved on to become a professor of English literature at Washington University in St. Louis (MO) from 1892 to 1901, and in 1902, he was made Chairman of the Library and Museum Committee of the Burns Cottage Association for the St. Louis World Fair that year. From 1905 through to 1911, he was a professor of English literature at the University of Southern California. He also became the editor of West Coast Magazine in 1908.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: His sister, Mary, married Scottish physicist and mathematician Cargill Gilston Knott (30 June 1856 – 26 October 1922) who became a Fellow of the Royal Society, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and President of the Scottish Meteorological Society.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 2: Knott’s Equations in geophysics are named after Cargill Gilston Knott and describe the partition of energy between reflected and refracted seismic waves.

Being on one’s own hook meant to be independent, and to hook it meant to run away.

Somewhere between 1891 and 1909 off the hook took on a new meaning. However, by 1909 it did mean what we understand the idiom to mean in 2022. Idiomation therefore pegs the idiom to the turn of the century — around 1900 — for the meaning of the idiom to have changed and for the change to be accepted by society in general.

Burn Rubber

When someone in a car burns rubber it means they have accelerated so quickly the wheels have spun causing smoke to come off the tires. In most countries, burning rubber and burnouts are against the law with punishment for doing so varying in degree of severity. Of course, burn rubber often enough and the tires and brakes on that car are going to have to be replaced.

When no car is involved, burning rubber means to leave a place or situation as quickly as possible.

In the 2018 book “Soaring with the Eagles” by former corporate pilot Ron Little, in the segment titled “Waller Administration 1972 – 1976”, the author wrote:

Landing at an airport in north Mississippi with the governor once, a Trooper met us to take the governor to a meet with town officials. There was a dirt road from the airport with a turn off about a mile to the paved main road. The governor up front and pilots sat in the back. Waiting for instructions from the boss, the governor asked, “Can you drive?” The Trooper replies, “Yes, sir.

The governor said, “Come on, man. Burn some rubber, we’re late.”

Off we went, as the speed passed seventy, we in the back seat could hear the gravel hitting the wheel wells and thought, “This is it, we are goners.”

Cameron Tuttle wrote in the “The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road” published in 1999 with another edition published in December 2012 that “no one will mess with a chick who burns rubber.” The author then goes on to describe how to burn rubber when the car is an automatic and how to burn rubber when the car is a stick-shift.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: This isn’t Cameron Tuttle’s only Bad Girl guidebook. There are three others: A Guide to Getting What You Want, A Guide to Getting Personal, and A Guide to the Party Life. This particular book has a 4 1/2 out of 5 stars rating with helpful positive reviews.

The Gap Band released a song in 1980 that was on their album The Gap Band III titled “Burn Rubber.” The song wasn’t about cars or racing. It was about a woman who did a man wrong. One of the most telling parts of this romance gone wrong were these lyrics:

You told me to go up the block
To get you a strawberry pop
When I got back to the flat
You had burned rubber out the back.

I went to the closet and saw no clothes
All I saw was hangers and poles
I went to the phone and called your mother
And told me that you had burned rubber on me, Charlie

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Brothers Charlie, Ronnie and Robert Wilson originally named their band the Greenwood, Archer and Pine Street Band in 1967 in their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The group shortened its name to The Gap Band later on.

In Volume 176, Number 6 of Popular Science published in June 1960, the literal sense of burning rubber was eloquently described in describing the Dart in the article “Torture-Testing Cars for Police Patrol” by Bill Carroll. The article described in detail how Lt. Ron Root of the Pomona Police Department and Officer Gordon Browning of the Los Angeles Police Department put the following cars through their paces: Plymouth, Dart, Dodge, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Ford.

The Dodge Dart was in production from 1959 through to 1976 with model years from 1960 through to 1976. The 1960 – 1962 models had a 118-inch wheelbase, which was four inches smaller than the usual Dodges. It had long rear quarter panels with red reflector buttons set into the bad edges of each fender just above the tail lights.

From a standstill he crosses the quarter-mile timing line at 80 m.p.h., reaches 115 on the 0.7-mile straight, brakes to 75 for the first sweeping left turn and to 60 for a right-angle bend, slams into second gear for a dangerous reverse left under a bridge. Full throttle now, rear wheels biting deep to burn rubber around a rough left at 75 and ease right between too-close telephone poles. Then up to 90 on the short back straight, brake again, drift right over a spring-bending hump, hold 80 around a sweeping “U.” The short straight is good for 100; brake to 65 for Turn 11 and again up to 100 — 110 — 115 on the long straight. Brake to 75 and start another lap.

In seven minutes, the Dart finishes four laps.

This description makes the Dart sound almost romantic in an automotive sense, don’t you think? It’s easy to see how burning rubber could become popular with teens and young adults in the 1960s.

But burning rubber was happening long before then. In fact, in a letter from the War Department Air Corps dated 6 April 1942 and addressed to all Americans, Colonel R. J. Jones of the Air Corps spoke about ways to help the war effort which had created shortages in crude and synthetic rubber. Among the items that required these were car tires.

Don’t speed around curves. Fast turns burn rubber off tires.

This means Americans were aware that burning rubber was happening during the WWII era and they knew how burning rubber happened. But they weren’t the first generation of drivers to burn rubber.

In an advertisement placed in the September 1933 edition of Popular Mechanics promoting the use of Ethyl at the pump, the copy began with: “Yessir, I used to burn rubber with the best of ’em. Now all the wife lets me do is read the news of the tracks. But I still use Ethyl in any car I drive.”

Idiomation couldn’t imagine this expression go back this far much less further yet, however research found the term used in an April 1921 article “Traffic Perils and the Law: How Can Safety be Assured to Motorist and Pedestrian?” written by Bailey Millar, author of Paradoxes of Prohibition and published in Volume 46 of Sunset Magazine.

A ball is tossed into the street and half a dozen little chaps run after it, stringing out in such a way that a motorist, driving at twenty miles an hour, finds it impossible to dodge them all, while the ever-so-quick setting of the brake, particularly on a down-grade, is of no avail. The driver may burn rubber for ten yards and yet have to endure the soul-sickening experience of running down and maiming or slaying one of that merry little party, all innocent of a fact, which looms like an Alp to most motorists, though many parents will not concede it, that in these days of the flying car and delivery truck no child should be permitted to play in the street.

Yes, it may seem darkly humorous that burning rubber and only driving twenty miles an hour are found in the same sentence, but readers need to remember cars were new-fangled contraptions back then, and not the technologically advanced transportation cars are these days.

Prior to this article, Idiomation was unable to find the expression as it refers to operating cars, tires, and speed. Idiomation did find, however, a number of articles throughout the 1910s that spoke of the process of vulcanization used to makes tires where it was repeatedly stated that the process did not burn rubber.

Idiomation therefore pegs the first published mention of burning rubber as we understand it to mean in 2022 to the article published in Sunset Magazine in 1921 which indicates that some time in the 10 years preceding this article, the term came to be understood to mean what it means today.

Knock On Wood

Have you noticed some people say something about a future occurrence followed by the expression knock on wood? If you have ever wondered what the means, that person doesn’t want to tempt fate after making a favorable claim, so they tack knock on wood to the end of their declaration. If you knock on wood, the superstition is that you should be able to avoid bad luck.

In the UK the idiom is touch wood while in the US the idiom is knock on wood but finding the origins of either idiom was wrought with all sorts of twists and turns along the way.

During the Victorian era, there was a children’s game called Tig Touch Wood which is now known as Tag. While it’s not the origin of the UK idiom, it’s an interesting fact worth keeping in mind. We will get back to this later on in this entry.

Back in the 18th century in the U.S., it was common practice for someone loading a rifle to knock on the wooden stock of that rifle to ensure the gun powder would settle properly. It increased the chances of the ensuing shot being a clean shot instead of backfiring on the shooter. But as with the Tig Touch Wood information, it’s not the origin of the US version of the idiom.

Interestingly enough, knock on wood wasn’t published in any books or magazines before 1892, but touch wood first began to appear in books in 1742, and when it did, it wasn’t the touch wood we know today.

Idiomation decided to track down the idiom touch wood first and found the Victorian era game in “The Boy’s Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of All the Diversions, Athletic, Scientific, and Recreative of Boyhood and Youth” compiled by William Clarke (1800 – 17 June 1838) and published in 1829 through an American publishing press, Munroe and Francis in Boston, and by Charles S. Francis in New York. The game was known as Touch and in some cases, Touch-iron or Touch wood.

It was accepted that in the North Country of England, the game of Touch Wood was known as Tig Touch Wood (mentioned earlier in this entry) — a derivative of the Saxon phrase tillan meaning to touch and ligbaere meaning flame or fiery. The game, however, was the same: Children chased after each other but were exempt by law of the game from capture while touching wood.

While that is amusing, stepping back even earlier, Idiomation learned that in the early 1800s tigwood was a rotten piece of wood used to catch the fire struck from a flint according to the Samuel Johnson and William Perry tome published in 1805 titled “The Synonymous, Etymological, and Pronouncing English Dictionary.” This is further confirmed by a poem by English poet and writer Charles Cotton (28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) from over 150 years earlier titled, “Scarronides: Or, Virgil Travestie: A Mock Poem on the First and Fourth Books of Virgil’s Aeneid, in English Burlesque” wherein this stanza is found.

For each man had his flint and touch-wood
The world besides could shew no such wood:
The sticks they gather, leaves and briers,
And fall a making them good fires;
Then skellets, pans, and posnets put on
To make them porridge without mutton.

And in English philologist and lexicographer Nathan Bailey’s “An Universal Etymological English Dictionary” first published in 1730, touch wood is included and defined as a rotten wood for starting fires. Even the “Dictionnaire Royal François-anglois et Anglo-françois” published during that same time period agreed that Touch Wood was rotten wood used to start a fire.

Somewhere between the earlier meaning of rotten wood and the boys’ game, Touch Wood had a change of heart from being rotten wood with which to start a fire to part of the rules for playing the game, and all in the space of one generation or so it seems.

Additionally, the only good luck tied to touching wood seems to be in the children’s game more so than in starting fires.

The research took back Idiomation back to knock on wood, and in 1932, the expression was used in the Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court in the case between M. C. Schaefer Appellant, and Sam Macri et al Appellees, in the County of Multnomah, Oregon. Mr. Schaefer had requested and paid the official court reporter, Glen W. Walston, for three copies of a transcript of the proceedings, and upon checking the copies, he found them to be inaccurate. He brought this to the attention of the official court reporter in a letter dated, 1952. The complaint listed the series of events, including this:

You then said, ‘I’ve had an awful time on this; the girl I had on the first part of this work was drunk and we really had quite a time of it. I’ve made only one mistake in the last three years, and that wasn’t on my part; the typist typed “did” instead of “didn’t” in a brief.’ Your wife then, coming toward your office from another office, said: ‘Don’t say that; I heard that, you know what will happen when you say a thing like that.’ And you said, ‘Yes, I know, I should knock on wood. I think that should cover all the errors, and I will check my notes and write up all additional changes and mail this with the certificates to you in a few days.’

An excellent explanation of how people buy into the concept of knocking on wood being a call to good luck appeared in Volume 29 of Advertising and Selling magazine in the 15 May 1920 edition. The President of the Manternach Company, Michael C. Manternach (1884 – 3 July 1977), wrote an article titled, “Why the Summer Layoff Is Founded On Fallacy: What an Agency Head Things of the Custom of Dropping July and August Out of the Advertising Schedule.” Almost immediately, the writer took on facts and reason versus beliefs and superstition.

For instance: thousands of good, sensible American men and women “knock on wood” when sickness, loss of money or any other misfortune is mentioned. Or course, they do not really believe that “knocking on wood” can avert evil. The slightest reasoning would dispel such belief; the most superficial examination of facts would disprove it. Nevertheless, this custom positively controls the actions of thousands of sensible people because they do not submit it to the tests of reason and of fact. They “knock on wood” because others “knock on wood.”

A few years earlier in 1910, at the afternoon session of the Fifth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Indiana conducted by Commissioner McClure who opened the session by mentioning Item #6 on the program titled, “Whether It Is Advisable to Establish on the Railroads Committees of Safety: The Chicago and Northwestern Plan.” The plan was not original in that it was shared the plan was based on that devised by the United States Steel Corporation where the results of the plan were labeled wonderful.

Chairman Wood stated for the record that the E.J. & E. Railways had a similar safety plan, and he suggested Mr. Kirk, the representative for E.J. & E. Railway, a division of the Illinois Steel Company, enlighten everyone on their safety plan. In the transcript of this session, the following was recorded:

CHAIRMAN WOOD: Mr. Chairman, just another word. What I want to protest against is that there is so much here — there are so many fatalists amongst us. Every time I tell the superintendents about these accidents that happen they “knock on wood” but that is just about all they do. Now what Mr. Richards said about this is true and what do we do but “knock on wood.” Now can’t we do something? That is what this convention is for.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Chairman Wood was William J. Wood, Railroad Commissioner for Evansville, and Commissioner McClure was John F. McClure, Railroad Commissioner for Anderson.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: The E.J. & E. Railway was the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway that ran between Waukegan, Illinois and Gary, Indiana. The railway became part of CN (Canadian National) Railway through a merger in 2009 when it became part of its Wisconsin Central (WC) subsidiary.

The idiom was in quotation marks which indicates it wasn’t a well-known idiom among railway men at least back in 1910 however it did exist as American Folklore as mentioned in the 1892 edition of the Journal of American Folklore.

Many people will not step across a tethered cow’s rope. They will go around the cow, or lift up the rope and go under. Many will not go under a ladder, even the masons at work.

If your right hand itch, you will get money. You should knock on wood, according to the saying.

That indicates that in 1892, knocking on wood for good luck was already a saying but no matter how much research was done, Idiomation was unable to trace the idiom further back than the mention in 1892.

Some will say the expressions date back to pagan times based solely on conjecture, and others say the expression dates back to a time when people believed good spirits lived in trees. Some even believe the woodstock on a firearm mentioned previously in this entry is the origin of the idiom.

The fact of the matter is that the origin of these two idioms which are related in spirit but perhaps not in origin remain unknown at this time. Idiomation will continue to search for the definitive answer for both these idioms which appear to be related but until then, this idiom is listed as unknown.

Jump The Shark

When someone or something jumps the shark it means the person or thing has hit a new low in delivering quality, relying on gimmicks to hold people’s attention. Yes, when jumping the shark, whatever the action, it is perceived by others as a seriously misguided attempt to regain attention for someone or something that is no longer as popular as it once was.

Over the past few years, a number of politicians have allegedly been jumping the shark according to mainstream media including, but not limited to, President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump at the top, to Connecticut Governor Edward Milner “Ned” Lamont Jr. on through to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In 2021, Harvard University elected its first-ever atheist chaplain and earned the reputation as being the first Ivy League University to jump the shark by electing an atheist chaplain to lead their religious community. Yes, the man who described himself to the media and followers as being a “devout atheist” was named president of chaplains at Harvard University.

Opinion contributor Bernard Goldberg saw his OpEd piece published in The Hill on 21 October 2021 with the headline “What Will It Take To Get The Woke Folks to Jump The Shark?” The piece began with this tidbit of information:

On Sept. 20, 1997, Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, better known as “Fonzie,” or simply the “Fonz,” made history — of sorts. That’s the day he jumped the shark.

Bernard Goldberg was actually mistaken about the date Fonzie jumped the shark. That happened twenty years earlier on 20 September 1977.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News.

However, in 1997, Jon Hein created a website registered as, Jump The Shark, where he published a long list of television shows that had, in his opinion, jumped the shark, indicating at what point that had happened.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Jon Hein sold Jump The Shark Inc. for over $1 Million USD in 2006. According to an interview with Jon Hein, the website was always something he did in his spare time, and was never his day job. It was never his intent to make money from the website however when he was offered $1 Million USD by Gemstar (the owners of TV Guide) on 20 June 2006, he decided it was a fair offer and accepted it.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Jon Hein graduated from the University of Michigan in 1989 with a double major in communications and history.

On 23 October 2009, Steve Duran used the phrase in the title of his article “Who Or What Caused The NFL To Jump The Shark: Was It Goodell or London?” for the Bleach Report. It was the year after the housing crisis of 2008 in the US which was, at the time, considered to be the worst economic downturn in almost 80 years, and the NFL was charging fans and arm and a leg to attend games and watch them on pay-per-view.

There is an old saying in television, it’s called, “Jumping the Shark.” Fonzie jumped a shark while wearing his leather jacket and from that point forward the show stopped being relavent [sic]. Granted it was a long spiral down, but most assuredly the direction was down.

Just a few years earlier, Washington Post staff writer Ann Hornady reviewed Angeline Jolie’s movie “The Cradle of Life” and when her review was published on 25 July 2003, it wasn’t a particularly favorable one. It wasn’t completely unfavorable either, however it did end with this commentary.

There’s a phrase for franchises that have outlived their freshness: “jumping the shark,” referring to an infamous “Happy Days” episode featuring Fonzie on water skis. In “The Cradle of Life,” Lara Croft doesn’t jump the shark — she’s much too refined for such blatant pandering — but she does manage to take it for a ride.

Everything points to the television show “Happy Days” as being the moment when the spirit of jumping the shark came alive with character Arthur “Fonzie aka The Fonz” Fonzarelli played by American actor Henry Winkler jumped over a shark with water skis while wearing his trademark leather jacket.

But jumping the shark at that point in time was just a scene in a television episode and not an idiom.

According to Chris Hutchins of Cox News Service, that happened later. In an article printed in the Chicago Tribune on 20 March 2002 titled, “When Shows Jump The Shark” the journalist stated: “Jumping the shark was coined by Jon Hein of New York City.”

This led Idiomation back to Jon Hein who, as we knew at this point, was responsible for creating the Jump The Shark website in 1997. This meant that it was agreed by all parties that the phrase was coined sometime between the episode in 1977 and the creation of Hein’s website in 1997.

Tropedia indicates that Jon Hein coined the term with his college friends in the mid-1980s while still in college, and a number of reputable websites including IndieWire support that assertion based on an interview on the Howard Stern show in the summer of 2006.

The IndieWire article reported that Jon Heim created the site a decade after the idiom was coined, which means the idiom came about sometime in 1987.

However, other sources claim the idiom was coined by Jon Heim and his roommate Sean Connolly, not solely by Jon Heim, and not by Jon Heim and a group of college friends, in 1985 while they were attending the University of Michigan.

In fact, in an interview with the University of Michigan newspaper Michigan Today on 19 February 2016, Jon Heim shared with reporter Alan Glenn how the idiom came about.

I was sitting with my buddies at 807 South Division and we were talking about when our favorite shows started to go downhill. A couple examples came out, and somebody said, “Happy Days.” My roommate of four years, my freshman roommate all through graduation, Sean Connolly, who’s an ROTC guy, and very, very funny, said — not in a joking way — “When Fonzie jumped the shark.” There was a pause in the room because we all knew exactly what he meant … Throughout college, we’d use the phrase.

Idiomation therefore pegs the idiom to late 1985 and attributes it to Sean Connolly as does Jon Hein.

Down The Rat Hole

Last month, Idiomation posted about going down the rabbit hole, and along the way we found out about going down the rat hole which isn’t at all the same as going down the rabbit hole. When someone goes down the rat hole, it’s for a worthless purpose or reason and is a complete waste of money as well as resources.

Now the rathole being researched isn’t the rathole that’s known in poker playing circles. When a rathole refers to cards, that means to leave the table with a profit, and to return later on with a minimum buy-in after pocketing that big win. While ratholing is a great way to ensure a gambler doesn’t lose all the money they won previously, it’s not something most gamblers or casinos look kindly upon.

With the difference explained, let’s return to going down the rat hole.

The Military News published a story on 5 March 2021, it was reported that the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee questioned how the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program fit into the Defense Department’s future strategy. With the program’s total cost projected to surpass $1 trillion USD over a 50-year service lifetime, Democratic representative Adam Smith referred to the program as throwing money “down that particular rathole.”

Jordan Ross Belfort, the infamous American entrepreneur, former stockbroker and convicted felon who pleaded guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation, created, by way of his crimes, the perfect example of throwing money down the rat-hole.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: The major motion picture by Warner Brothers, “Wolf of Wall Street” is based on Jordan Ross Belfort and his time on Wall Street.

Back on 1 October 1981, the New York Times reported on U.S. Federal bureaucrat and whistleblower Al Louis Ripskis, who tasked himself with tracking down the waste and malfeasance in his own agency and root it out. It was stated that Mr. Ripskis past crusades resulted in Congressional hearings and publicity that embarrassed and humiliated officials. This time, he railed against the ways his agency could have researched water conservation without spending $500,000 USD in the process.

From his office in a ninth-floor cubbyhole at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Al Louis Ripskis whispers into the phone. “The brazenness. The gall. They’re pouring money down a rat hole!”

Even Time magazine made use of the expression, reporting it in an article titled, “Political Note: Rat Hole” published on 3 February 1930. The article dealt with Chicago’s public debt with no money in the City Treasury, none in the Cook County Treasury, and none in the School Board Treasury. Twenty-three park boards were penniless.

There was $500,000 outstanding on coal and because of that, coal dealers were refusing to deliver more coal to schools. Over $7 million was owed to provision merchants supplying food, and 13,000 teachers had not been paid at all in 1930, not just in the current school year. Nearly 4,000 Cook County employees were owed over a million dollars in back pay, and that wasn’t all that was going on.

No taxes had been paid in the city or county in 20 months as a result of the 1928 rebellion of property owners against discriminatory assessments. Tax warrants had been issued but Chicago bankers refused to advance any more cash on the $189,000,000 worth of tax warrants that had been issued.

The State Tax Commissioner William H. Malone had suggested the sale of $50,000,000 tax warrants to Chicago railroads, industries, and large landed corporations, but Chicago railroads, industries and large landed corporations objected on the basis that the city already owed all of them millions of dollars in services rendered.

Prominent Chicago lawyer, Silas Hardy Strawn (15 December 1866 – 4 February 1946), was an organizer of a Citizens’ Committee who understood all too well the desperate straits in which Chicago’s politicians had placed its citizens. The magazine reported that Silar Hardy Strawn stated clearly:

“Everyone stays asleep. . . . They talk politics, of getting somebody out of office. . . . They saw they would be putting their money down a rat hole with the present politicians in office.”

Chicago Mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson (14 May 1869 – 19 March 1944) marginalized Silas Hardy Strawn’s comments, blaming “reformers” and Chicago newspapers for the troubles Chicago was experiencing.

Virginia’s Norfolk Post newspaper of 5 August 1921 used the expression in a headline: “Money Down The Rat-Hole.” At the time, the Shipping Board was alleged to have a hostile attitude towards labor and that hostile attitude resulted in a strike which allegedly cost millions. It was claimed in the article if honest practices were forced by the Shipping Board, there would be a saving of $18.50 out of every $100.00 spent in operations instead of the $2.25 out of every $100.00 by way of the Shipping Board’s wage reduction and ship lay-offs decision.

B.C. Butler, manager of general advertising for four daily newspapers published in Omaha, St. Paul, Des Moines, and Kansas City, took on newspapers in a letter that was published in a number of other newspapers and magazines in 1906. It was published in the Printers’ Ink: A Journal for Advertisers in Volume LVI Issue Number 6 on 8 August 1906. The letter began as follows:

Geo. P. Rowell says circulation is the number of perfect papers printed.

Thus doth the venerable authority mislead the advertiser into one of the worst “rat-holes” that ever ruined an advertising campaign.

This “rat-hole” is unpaid circulation, and down this “rat-hole” the advertisers of America have poured millions of dollars.

He was on a roll, and after a few more pointed comments were made, he ended his letter thusly:

In closing I wish to say that the St. Paul Daily News has only quality circulation to sell, and we guarantee advertisers that its total net paid up circulation every day is larger than any other newspaper in St. Paul, without regard to any circulation figures that are now printed and accepted by advertisers and agency directories to the contrary.

This is a pretty strong claim, but we want somebody to disprove it. It may start the fur flying but we will locate the “rat-hole” while we are on the subject of advertising “rat-holes.”

In an article titled, “Success in Manufacturing” published in Volume 21 of The Manufacturer and Builder: A Practical Journal of Industrial Progress published in July of 1889, quick mention was made of the Westinghouse Machine Company of Pittsburgh that had sent fully equipped experts out to visit a number of prominent manufacturing establishments so they could test the consumption of power by each machine. The question was asked why economize in wages and in the cost of raw materials when there was waste of fuel and power happening. The article ended stating the following:

Few people in this country seem to realize the amount of money that can be wasted in a year, through the steam pipe. The proverbial ‘rat hole’ will not compare with it. The manufacturer who has learned to economize at the steam pipe, has learned one of the most important secrets of success.

Fifteen years earlier, on 23 February 1874, the Daily Republican newspaper of Little Rock, Arkansas reported on page 1:

The ways and means committee, as well as the people, state they would like to see how that $30,000 was appropriated before they pour any more money down the rat-hole.

Twenty years earlier, on 18 July 1854, the Georgia Telegraph reported this on page 2 of its newspaper.

The Memphis Appeal thinks it a pretty good sign of hard times “when you see a (illegible) worth seventy thousand digging for two hours with a pickaxe for a five cent piece that had rolled down a rat hole.

But Idiomation came across an interesting article in the Litchfield Enquirer of 28 July 1842. It isn’t so much the passing of Mr. South that was interesting but rather where he had hidden his money.

The Norwich Courier of Tuesday states that a Mr. South, for many years the keeper of a drinking and oyster shop in that city died on the previous day in a fit. On searching his premises about four thousand dollars in specie was found stowed away in old segar and raisin boxes, in bags and old shoes, in every rat-hole about the shop.

Another article from 02 February 1842, the Camden Journal in South Carolina reprinted an article from the Charleston Courier newspaper about money found.

In removing some logs which had been lying for a year post upon Commercial Wharf, the laborers found, in a rat hole, about four hundred dollars in bills of the Georgetown Bank. One man found nearly two hundred dollars, including three 50 dollar bills.

It seems to Idiomation that hiding paper money down rat-holes may have been something done in the mid 1800s which would certainly explain the idiom of throwing anything of value down the rathole was a bad idea as rats, like any rodent, are more than happy to shred money to make a comfy nest for themselves.

Idiomation therefore pegs the idiom to the 1850s with a strong nod to the fact that rat holes and bank notes made strange bedfellows long before that time and no idea who published the idiom first.