Red Out

When most people hear the term “red out” they think of a sports team with red as the primary colour on their jerseys.  Some of the older folk might think about communism.  

The term “red out” has 3 separate meanings.  The first meaning is a medical reference that relates to the homogeneous red-orange colour seen by GI endoscopy that allows only the passage of light across the blood vessel-rich mucosa.

The second meaning for “red out” is another medical condition where centripetal acceleration drives blood to the head, causing a reddening of the visual field and bringing on a significant severe headache.  A red out usually happens when a person is subjected to a negative force of gravity, as in stunt flying or a sudden dive in a plane.  The mental confusion that develops at high accelerations may lead to near-unconsciousness (brown out) or unconsciousness (black out).  The term was first used by the military in 1942.

And the term “Cosmic Red Out” — or the third meaning for the term “red out” — can be found in an article by Michael S. Turner of the University of Chicago in the September 2009 issue of Scientific American.  Turner applies the term to the proposed situation in which acceleration continues and where the Milky Way/Andromeda/et al fusion galaxy eventually finds itself alone in the observable universe.  The term ‘red out’ is designed to refer to the ever increasing cosmic redshift of extra-galactic bodies.

Shoot The Breeze

In brief, to “shoot the breeze” means to chat, gab, sit around and talk.  The phrase has been around for decades.  In fact, The Evening Independent newspaper of St. Petersburg (FL) reported on November 8, 1958 in an article entitled “TV Takes Dim View of ‘Bowery’ Chat” opened with:

Author Ben Hecht, who likes to include a little bit of everything on his nightly television chat, invited six Bowery bums to shoot the breeze with him on Friday night’s show.  But the anonymous gentlemen from Manhattan’s famous avenue of the down-and-out didn’t get close to mike or camera.  The management of stations WABC-TV was unwilling to take a chance on what they  might say.

It’s a phrase that’s been used by respected newspapers and on May 5, 1957, the New York Times ran an article about then-Senator Richard L. Neuberger’s suggestion to Congress, entitled “Congress Urged to Get, Not Shoot, the Breeze.”

The Guide to U.S. Naval Academy 149 has an entry for the phrase “shoot the breeze” that states it means “to refight the Civil War, etc.”  In fact, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on April 20, 1942 that warned citizens that the new slang of the  modern Navy resembled  a completely separate language — a new and almost unintelligible jargon — a mixture of technical terms, abbreviations and sailorese.  To give readers a taste of the new jargon, the article included this line:

When two old seagoing friends get together again they’ll shoot the breeze but they won’t be hitting the shore until things are squared away.

Vic Bourasaw was aboard the U.S.S. Ramsay and stationed in Pearl Harbor at the time.  He wrote in his diary that his ship had the “Ready” duty beginning at 0800 on December 7, 1941 and then:

Our liberty was up at 0730. I came aboard about 0735 and went down to our (chief petty officer) quarters. There were eleven of us CPO’s. We were sitting around shooting the breeze and having our morning cup of mud (coffee).  There was some blasting as one of the chiefs remarked, starting at 0755. I got up and looked out from the forward hatch and what I saw caused me to say: “fellows man your stations we are being bombed by the Japs!”

Almost three weeks later, on December 26, 1941, he wrote the following:

Quite a few hours afterwards, while away aboard ship, shooting the breeze about our youngsters — seems like most of the men, older ones have kids or one at least. A Hawaiian girl that lives next door to us sure got a drag with me. Brought me over a shot of Alky. The liquor stores have been closed since Dec. 7th.

The phrase “shoot the breeze” is very likely a variation of “talking into the wind” which was recorded in an Ohio newspaper, The Portsmouth Times on March 26, 1932 when an article entitled “Dreamer’s Delayed Recognition” reported the following:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the hundredth anniversary of whose death was marked with fitting ceremonies last Tuesday here and abroad, would have said the same thing.  A half hundred other searching dreamers would have sold it.  And they, like Doctor Hauptman, would be talking into the wind.  Deep and endless pondering produces prophecies sand criticisms for which there can be no understanding audience until the world closes the gap between the moss mind and the scouts who run centuries before it.

Idiomation was unable to find any published version of “shoot the breeze” or “talk into the wind” prior to 1932 however the ease with which it was used in the Portsmouth Times story indicates that “talk into the wind” was an idiom that was understood in the 1930s.  It is, therefore, reasonable to believe that the phrase “talk into the wind” was part of every day language in the 1920s.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

In 1942, C.S. Lewis published a book entitled The Screwtape Letters that presented the fictional correspondence between two fictional demons. The correspondence addressed one issue and one issue alone:  the best method with which to secure and safeguard mankind’s eternal damnation.  The book states clearly to the reader know that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  What’s more, this extra bit about the road to Hell — quite the opposite of the narrow way into Heaven spoken of in the Bible in Matthew 7:13 -14 — is also found in the book:

It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.  Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.  Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

In Baltimore’s The Morning Herald on January 2, 1888 they ran an article entitled “Better Pay Old Vows.”  The story was about the Reverend Wayland D. Ball, pastor of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, who began the New Year with a sermon on using New Year’s Day to pay vows to God.  His sermon read in part:

We make some resolution of self-sacrifice, and then become happy over thinking how brave we are going to be and how good are going to become.  And contemplation is so much more pleasant and easy than performance that we are content with that.  but there is no virtue in good thoughts alone.  Religious emotion that comes from the mere making of vows is very often nothing but the Devil ticking us into a good humor with ourselves.  The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

In a letter to the editor of the Daily Southern Cross in New Zealand on April 20, 1855 entitled “Taranaki Versus His Excellency And His Executive” the author, identified only by his initials, E.M., began his comments with:

Sir, The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and his Excellency Colonel Wynyard appears anxious to complete the Taranaki portion of the pavement with the least possible delay.

That same year, the expression is found in H.G. Bohn’s Hand-book of Proverbs.  The proverb is from Portugal and states that:

Hell is paved with good intentions, and roofed with lost opportunities.

Even earlier than that, thought, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) is quoted as saying:

L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs” (Translated: “Hell is full of good intentions or desires.”)

The expression has evolved since the days of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, but the meaning remains the same.

Dragnet

“Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to read is true.” 

Many of us are familiar with the opening voice over from the “Dragnet” radio and television series.

A dragnet is a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals and other individuals.  The term comes from the fishing technique of dragging a fishing net across the sea bottom or through a promising area of open water.  While the fishing reference has been around for centuries, the police reference isn’t nearly as old.

In a book entitled “Illinois Parole Law” published in 1942 by the Department of Public Welfare for the State of Illinois it was stated that:

Two-fifths of Illinois population is in Cook county and the board is continually endeavoring to adjust its work to the problems of the city.  Two reasons actuate it.  First, a desire to protect the city from persons who have in the past been guilty of crime, and, second, ad esire to protect the parolee from the police dragnet and the many temptations and handicaps of city life.

Ten years before that, on May 18, 1932, newspapers reported that Luigi Malvese, bootleg gangster, was ambushed and shot to death in front of the Del Monte Barbershop at 720 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, California.   It was reported that “a police dragnet rounded up some 1,000 usual suspects in an attempt to pressure the underworld to rein in its wild men.” Louis Dinato, Al Capone’s tailor, was among those rounded up.

But long before the gangsters of the Prohibition Era, back in 1917, Ordway Rider was shot and died from a bullet wound to the chest.  His death was a cause célèbre in Edwardian Boston, pushing stories of war off the front page of all the papers for days.  According to the February 23 edition of The Boston Globe, in an article entitled “Police Dragnet Out For Bandits” it was reported that:

 ” … Ordway Rider was shot and instantly killed on the night of Feb. 21st 1917 by Bandits. Robbery was the motive. He was manager of one of the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company’s stores. He was held in high esteem by the company. His age was 58-6months.”

That being said, the earliest published reference I could find that speaks of a police dragnet was found in The Chicago Daily Tribune which published a news story on January 19, 1896 with the headline, “Bicycle Thieves Caught in Meshes of Police Dragnet.”

Pinch Pennies

The terms ‘penny pincher’ and to ‘pinch pennies’ came about at roughly the same time but with slightly different meanings.  A “penny pincher” is thought to be miserly while someone who chooses to “pinch pennies” is thought of as being thrifty. 

The more positive version of the term “penny pincher” was first recorded in 1942.

In June 1943, cartoonist Harry Haenigsen created a new cartoon character, Penny Pringle, and debuted it in The New York Herald-Tribune.  It became his most successful cartoon strip of all the strips he had in syndication. 

Penny was never gawky or shy and others saw her as confident and self-assured.  She was a no-nonsense kind of girl which mystified her cartoon parents, Roger and Mae Pringle. 

And, you guessed it, on top of all that, she was thrifty … always pinching (saving) her pennies and doing the smart thing every step of the way while staying current and popular with kids of her day.