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.

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.

Do A Houdini

When you do a Houdini or pull a Houdini it means you have left the scene — you know, disappeared — or somehow managed to wiggle out of a bad situation. It’s obvious this is a reference to the great magician Hungarian-American illusionist, stunt performer, and mysteriarch Harry Houdini (24 March 1874 – 31 October 1925) who could break locks, escape from submerged boxes, get out of straightjackets, slip out of water torture cells, walk through brick walls, make elephants disappear, and more.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Harry Houdini’s real name was Ehrich Weisz, son of Rabbi Mayer Weisz and Cecilia Steiner, who reworked the name of his idol, French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, and anglicized his given name to be more American thereby becoming Harry Houdini. Although he was born in Budapest, he claimed he was born in Appleton (WI) where he was raised.

The question is whether the idiom came about after Harry Houdini’s passing or if it came about during his lifetime.

Imagine Idiomation’s surprise when the following was found in Volume 75 of Collier’s National Weekly magazine for 18 April 1925 in an article titled “When Magic Didn’t Work” written by Houdini! But before getting to the article, the publishers inserted a large announcement that began thusly:

“Stop payment on that check. It did a Houdini!” Mr. Houdini wired us recently from Pittsburgh. The wizard (he modestly says he isn’t one) had been robbed!

This begged the question: Did the expression exist prior to the publisher’s note in Collier’s National Weekly magazine? The answer to that question is YES.

In Boy’s Life: The Boy Scouts’ Magazine, a short story by New York City author and teacher Wilbur S. Boyer titled “Music Hath Charms” was published in the November 1918 edition. At the time, Woodrow Wilson was the Honorary President, and Theodore Roosevelt was an Honorary Vice-President of the Boy Scouts of America as were William H. Taft and Daniel Carter Beard. Daniel Carter Beard was also a member of the Editorial Board.

Placing one end of the long scantling under the edge of the roof, he grasped the lower end and lifted and pulled the scantling towards an upright position. He was delighted to find that with his leverage he was able to raise the roof away from the side walls until he had a space of over a foot clear.

“Oh, joy, oh, boy! Where do we go from here?” he chuckled. “Here’s where I do a Houdini. Hey, Caruso?”

Mention of the dog made him pause.

Years earlier, the general public and the media as well as the illusionist himself referred to Harry Houdini as the Handcuff King and Jail Breaker. In fact, in an article titled, “A Mechanical Wizard” published in Volume 8, Number 3 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine published in March 1906, the article described him in this way but with the additional of the word ‘international.’ The news story reported that Harry Houdini had performed an escape in two minutes from a jail cell at a United Stated jail in Washington, broken into a second jail where his clothes were locked up, dressed, then proceeded to release all the prisoners that had been moved to the ground floor to leave him to perform his escape in the first place. The warden was gobsmacked that in the space of twenty-one minutes, Harry Houdini had succeeded so spectacularly.

It was, without a doubt, a legendary feat to escape from such a cell even the warden believed was escape-proof.

We know from Houdini’s biography that he began performing magic tricks in public when he was 17 years old, back in 1891, along with his friend “Dash.” They called themselves “The Brothers Houdini.” A year later, Harry fell in love with a dancer named Bess, they married, and Harry and Bess established a new magic act together as “The Houdinis” with Beth acting as Harry’s assistant.

In 1899, Hungarian-American vaudeville impressario and theater manager Martin Beck (31 July 1868 – 16 November 1940) took Harry Houdini under his wing, and by 1904 Houdini earned the title of Handcuff King when, in an hour, he got out of an escape-proof set of handcuffs that had been fashioned by a blacksmith in England who had devoted five years to creating the unbreakable handcuffs.

It was two years after this that the Washington jail event happened.

On 5 Januay 1907, in the “Reports of Proceedings of the City Council of Boston for the Twelve Months Commencing 1 January 1906 and ending 5 January 1907” the term was used in what appears to be the first published version of the term.

Alderman Fred James Kneeland spoke eloquently about the report of the committee titled, “County of Suffok House of Correction, Deer Island” and had questions about the use of the word escape in the report. Within his statement, the following was spoken by Alderman Kneeland:

I remember quite distinctly that the County Commissioners went to the Suffolk County Jail sometime during the past summer and it was decided by the County Commissioners that the Committee on Prisons, when they made their report, would give all the information to the public that was necessary. On pages 5 and 6 of this report we find “Suffolk County Jail.” There is nothing said on either of those pages about escaped prisoners whatsoever. The returns are signed by Fred H. Seavey, Sheriff. So far as my memory serves me, the two gentlemen spoken of by Alderman Linehan were fetched back to the jail; but in the case of the man who walked out, who did the Houdini, as the Alderman says, so far as I know, that man has yet to come back to Mr. Seavey. If this is going to be a public document, is going down into history as a report of the Committee on Prisons, and is going to be the official statement of Mr. Fred H. Seavey, I at least would like to ask Alderman Baldwin why some note has not been taken of the escaped prisoners at Charles Street Jail, and whether or not all the prisoners who have escaped have been returned to the jail?

The Chairman whom Alderman Kneeland addressed was Tilton Stuart Bell. Alderman Baldwin was John Edward Baldwin, and Alderman Linehan was Frank J. Linehan.

Idiomation pegs the idiom to 1906 — after the Washington jail break and before the Boston City Council meeting of 5 January 1907 — although who to credit for the idiom is unknown. Idiomation knows it was an expression that was understood by the Boston (MA) City Council members at the time so the idiom was part of every day language at this point.

That being said, the idiom obviously it met with Harry Houdini’s blessing for him to use the idiom himself in 1925.

MacGyverism

It wasn’t very difficult to track down the meaning or history of the word MacGyverism mostly because it was a straight road to where you might think it would lead. According to the Collins Dictionary, MacGyverism refers to any person who uses the resources at hand to successfully resolve a situation in which they find themselves.

Angus MacGyver, played by American actor Richard Dean Anderson, always found ingenious ways to get out of what seemed to be impossible situations from 29 September 1985 through to 21 May 1992 on the U.S. television show MacGyver. He was a fictional secret agent and a strong ally to social and environmental causes who relied on the practical application of scientific principles and on-the-spot inventiveness using everyday items at his immediate disposal.

To most fictional characters in the series as well as viewers watching the show, MacGyver used random and useless pieces, tying them together to create an unexpected and effective way to counteract inevitable danger certain to spell his demise.

The items he used most often were his Swiss Army knife, a roll of duct tape (which he conveniently kept in his back pocket and flattened so it would fit without creating bulk), a sturdy plastic ID card, a Timex watch, strike-anywhere matches, paper clips, chewing gum, and a flashlight. The character was a multilinguist fluent in English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and American Sign Language, and he know International maritime signal flags as well as Morse code.

All this was possible for MacGyver in light of the fact his character was written as having a genius intellect and a penchant for improvisation and adaptability.

The term MacGyverism is derived from the television character and his amazing ability to overcome dangerous situations most others would be unable to survive.

On 19 October 2006, Hudson Street Press published “What Would MacGyver Do? True Stories of Improvised Genius in Everyday Life” by Brandon Vaughan. The book, according to the blurb, was inspired by the fictional character Angus MacGyver and included this passage:

Inspired by television’s Angus MacGyver (played by Richard Dean Anderson), a secret agent who relied on his brains and scientific prowess – not to mention duct tape and a Swiss Army knife to save the day, the “MacGyverisms” recounted range from the concrete (using Chex Mix to provide traction in an icy parking lot) to the intangible (saving a relationship with the perfect turn of phrase).

The term has also led to the verbs “to MacGyver” and “MacGyverize.” In fact, “to MacGyver” was courtesy of Stephen Lunch on 1 August 1997 in his article published in the Orange County Register.

To fix something without benefit of tools or a manual is called “to MacGyver” a solution after the television show in which Richard Dean Anderson disarmed nuclear bombs with paper clips.

In an interview with MacGyver producer and writer Stephen Downing for the Christian Science Monitor published on 24 December 1987, David R. Francis wrote this:

“[MacGyver] relies on his ingenuity and knowledge, rather than violence, to complete dangerous missions. [Downing] calls the use of science techniques as “MacGyverisms.”

It sounds to Idiomation that those who enjoyed the television series took to MacGyverizing because they liked what the main character stood for and how he didn’t have to rely on violence to get himself out of scrapes.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Stephen Downing retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in 1980 after more than 20 years of service. He rose to the title of Captain of Detectives, and he established homicide investigation techniques that continue to be used to this day. He was a Commanding Officer of the Juvenile Division and then the Commanding Officer of the Southwest Area where he designed and implemented the first functionally integrated police operation in law enforcement dealing with gang activity.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Stephen Downing’s son, Michael P. Downing has also served as an LAPD Deputy Chief, and served as the Commanding Officer of Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations, becoming the interim Chief of Police after Chief William J. Bratton stepped down in 2009.

However, it was a year earlier in 1986, in the second-season episode 3 titled, “Twice Stung” that the character of Joanne Remmings (played by Pamela Bowen) used the term. Later on in an episode of “Stargate SG-1” the character of Samantha Carter (played by Amanda Tapping) used the term.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Richard Dean Anderson played the role of Colonel Jack O’Neill in “Stargate SG-1” which aired on 27 July 1997. The series was a spin-off from the movie “Stargate.”

There was a MacGyver reboot (23 September 2016 to 30 April 2021) that ran for four seasons which starred American actor, model, and producer Lucas Till in the role of Angus MacGyver. As you can well imagine, the MacGyverisms continued.

And so Idiomation has pegged the term to 1986 and episode 3 of MacGyver as the source of the term. The next time someone says you’re guilty of a MacGyverism, smile. You’re being compared to a genius-level who adapts well to unexpected situations.

Weaponized Incompetence

Weaponized incompetence — also known as strategic incompetence or skilled incompetence — happens when someone does a task so poorly that one or more people take over and do the task for that person even when the person either knows how to do the task or could learn to do the task for himself/herself/themselves. It usually happens in relationships where one partner purposely does a task so poorly or claims to be unable to do the task as a way to force the other partner to take sole responsibility for the task. It’s a skilled way of avoiding what the individual believes is an undesirable task for them to do by demonstrating an unarguable inability to do said task.

Some claim it is a sexist behavior however males and females have shown both genders are quite adept at weaponized incompetence when they choose to default to the behavior in order to escape shouldering the responsibility of doing the task in the first place.

It happens when a male does the dishes so poorly that the female has to re-wash the dishes before serving food on those dishes.

It happens when a female claims she can’t follow a map or GPS directions to ensure the vehicle in which they are traveling will arrive at its intended destination forcing the driver (or another passenger) to take over the task of reading the directions on the map or the GPS.

It happens when a co-worker half-heartedly does their assigned task on a group project and leaves everyone else to take up the slack so the project is completed in a timely fashion and is done according to set standards.

How do you know if weaponized incompetence may be at play? When one or more people, exasperated with the poor performance of the person slacking off says, “I’ll do it for you” and the person slacking off is not only excused from all duties and responsibilities, but also absolved from any negative fall-out over how the project was completed, that person has successfully pulled off weaponized incompetence.

Like learned helplessness, weaponized incompetence is a learned behavior which can be unlearned.

Many claim that the expression first came to light in 2006 however weaponized incompetence is part of the cycle of gaslighting according to psychotherapists and psychiatrists.

In August 2008, university professor Carl Dyke wrote about strategic incompetence on the Dead Voles blog. At the time, he was teaching three courses of introductory world history as well as an upper-division seminar in World History since 1945. Carl Dyke had the following to say about this behavior:

Strategic incompetence is the art of making yourself more trouble than you’re worth in some area of unwelcome effort. This can involve being a painfully slow learner, a bumbler, or an impediment. In each case the objective is to make it easier for someone else to step in and do the work than to leave it to you. Arguably a species of passive aggression, although shading off into mere passivity or genuine incompetence.

Far from lacking in ability, those who successfully practice weaponized or strategic incompetence are also masters of expectations management and oftentimes project toxic niceness while feigning incompetence.

But long before it was called weaponized incompetence, and long before it was called strategic incompetence, back in 1986, business schools referred to this behavior as skilled incompetence. In the article “Skilled Incompetence” written by Chris Agyris (16 July 1923 – 16 November 2013) for The Magazine published by the Harvard Business Review in September 1986, he described in detail how this happened in large businesses. He described premeditated incompetence that was set up by the individual to avoid being responsible for completing a task they did not want to be responsible for completing.

It appears that while weaponized incompetence may have first appeared in 2006 as reported by a few websites, strategic incompetence was around a decade before that, and skilled incompetence was around a decade before that.

Idiomation understands that faked incompetence has been around for centuries — especially where passing the buck is possible — but the specific terms go back to 2006, 1996, and 1986 respectively.

Ballpark Figure

When someone asks for a ballpark figure or a ballpark estimate, they are interested in a somewhat qualified number guesstimate and are willing to accept a very rough estimate where necessary. Sometimes the figure guessed at is pretty close to bang on and sometimes the estimate is so far off-base as to be completely without merit. That being said, one shouldn’t confuse a ballpark figure with a good faith estimate.

In the Fall of 2019, Blue Origin’s CEO Bob Smith told the media that the first space trips on New Shepard would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Speaking at TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF conference, he stated new technology is never cheap but that the cost of a ticket for middle-class people would eventually be affordable. Until then, GeekWire‘s Alan Boyle reported Bob Smith “hinted at a ballpark figure.”

The Polk County Enterprise newspaper of Livingston (TX) — a semi-weekly newspaper that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising — ran an story with an interesting headline in Volume 117, Number 64, Edition 1 of their newspaper published on 12 August 1999. The article by Enterprise reporter, Emily Banks, reported County Judge John Thompson had asked Clyde Arrendell who was the chief appraiser of the Polk Central Appraisal District to a budget workshop. Emily Bank reported:

Emphasizing that all figres were “ballpark figures” Thompson reviewed the budget schedule, as well as the county’s tax history from 1982 forward.

The title of the news article was this: Court Studies Budget with Ballpark Figures.

In the book “Surviving in the Newspaper Business; Newspaper Management In Turbulent Times” written by William James (Jim) Willis (born 19 March 1946) and published in 1988, the writer paraphrased what Marion Krehbiel, former president of the major newspaper brokerage firm Krehbiel-Bolitho Newspaper Service, Inc. had stated in the late 1970s with regards to arriving at a fair market price for a small to medium size daily newspaper.

Krehbiel added a caveat to these indexes, however, when he noted in 1979 that this forumula is only meant to provide purchasers with a ballpark estimate of a newspaper’s worth.

The 24 June 1957 edition of The Des Moines Register included the column “Washington Memo” which purported to report on what was going on in Washington DC. In this edition, immediately after reporting on how an Army colonel felt about one of this tasks which came about after a Southern congressman “yelped about [the Army’s] handling of racial relations.” Here’s what readers learned next.

CODE: Pentagon language continues to produce new bafflers. One of them is “a ballpark figure” meaning a very rough estimate which doesn’t do much more than indicate that a given program is going to cost somebody an awful lot of money.

Kenneth Patchen (1911 – 1972) wrote “Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer” which was published by the New Directions Publishing Corporation in 1945. In this book, the concept of the ballpark figure is used in conjunction with being out in left field on page 101 in the chapter titled, “The Last Party I Ever Went To.”

“Miro complicates it simply because he doesn’t know how to handle his material.”
“But Arp does, I suppose.”
“Of course he does.”
“You’re way out in left field.”
“And you not even in the ball park.”
I poured it out. The sand looked very sticky and the leaves on the tree were getting sort of yellow around the edges.
“And what about De Niro? This is a serious young painter.”
“All right, what about Kamrowski? – or Lee Bell? – or Jackson Pollock? – or Arthur Sturcke?”

He wasn’t the first to coin the phrase though as some sources claimed. On 1 May 1944, The Morning Herald in Hagerstown (MD) was reporting that on what a senator claimed about U.S. aid for that year.

Sen. Jim Sasser, D-Tenn., said in a speech that total U.S. aid for the current year is about $250 million. He said “a ballpark figure” is that his proposal would halt $150 million to $180 million.

Idiomation realizes that many websites claim the expression dates back to the mid-sixties with the understanding we have of the idiom these days, but obviously it was around before then for it to be used in a newspaper article twenty years earlier with the expectation that readers would understand what the idiom meant.

Unable to find an earlier published version of ballpark figure, Idiomation pegs this idiom to at least ten to fifteen years earlier for it to be used to freely in a newspaper article in 1944.

Swaboda

This past April (2021), while researching a completely different idiom, Idiomation found an expression that was intriguing: Swoboda movements. This week, we took on the arduous task of finding out what was meant by this expression, and what was uncovered was certainly unexpected!

The original passage Idiomation found was in a letter dated 8 December 1904, written by James Clark of Elgin (IL) who was a traveling agent for the Sherwin-Williams Company in Northern Illinois to his son, William, who had completed his first month of business experience in Johnes’ Hardware Store in Port Center in Michigan. In his letter to his son, James Clark wrote in part:

Have plenty of nerve always, but use your nerve with intelligence. Give your brain some exercise, put it through a few Swoboda movements just before you tackle the new proposition. Be just sufficiently afraid of making mistakes to realize that your thinking apparatus is one of the best mistake killers known to science.

References to Swoboda movements were sparse at best, however, we came across articles from such reputable magazines as the Kansas City Medical Records, Volume 28, Issue 9 in 1909, Volume 28 of the Advertising and Selling magazine in an article dated 28 September 1918, and other publications, and in advertisements aplenty in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Here’s the scoop on Swoboda.

Alois P. Swoboda (8 March 1873 – 13 December 1938) was an Austria-born American quack and physical culture mail-order instructor. In some ways, he may be thought of as the precursor to late night infomercials with his quackery and pseudo-scientific claims. He brazenly hawked his system as a one-size fits all cure for every disease known to man. He even went as far as to claim that his system was guaranteed by the government of the United States of America which, of course, it did not.

In Volume 70, Number 11 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of 16 March 1918, Swoboda was called out for his so-called medical advancement. In the article it stated:

Not that [the book explaining the Swoboda system] means anything but it sounds rather scientific and can be counted on to impress both the thoughtless and that still larger class of individuals who merely think they think. Swoboda is not the first to appreciate that a meaningless phrase, if couched in pseudo-technical language, paraded frequently and solemnly with a lavish use of italics, capitals and blackfaced type, may be counted on effectually to take the place of thought or common sense.

These days, most people are familiar — in varying degrees — with the Church of Scientology, and are aware that L. Ron Hubbard is responsible for establishing Scientology. What they don’t know is that L. Ron Hubbard’s uncle, American writer, publisher, anarchist, and traveling salesman Elbert Green Hubbard (19 June 1856 – 7 May 1915) was an enthusiastic backer of Alois P. Swoboda’s system, and that many of Swoboda’s teachings became part of the backbone of Scientology.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: The ninth printing of “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” was dedicatd by L. Ron Hubbard to his uncle, Elbert Green Hubbard.

For a time the expression Swoboda movements was trying to elbow its way into the English language, but like many buzz phrases over the generations, ultimately no one was interested in taking it much further than the occasional letter published in a newspaper story or magazine article, and so it remains firmly lodged between 1900 and 1905 forevermore.

As a side note, Alois P. Swoboda was mentioned in a Time Magazine article of 7 July 1930 but it had very little to do with his sytem, his movements, or the expression.

This short-lived expression dates back to 1900, and falls completely out of use within a few short years. But oh! what an interesting history that expression has, and what interesting side notes (behond the one in this entry) to boot!