When something sells well due to popular demand, you may hear people say the item is selling like hotcakes. Hotcakes (also known as pancakes or griddlecakes) have been around for centuries but the expression came about much later.
The story goes that back in the 17th century, cornmeal based pancakes were made and sold after church on Sundays, and the demand was so great that as soon as they were made, they were sold and still very hot indeed.
The Smith & Hemenway Company of New York City took out advertising space in a number of magazines in Spring of 1905 to promote their Red Devil Nail Clippers which, they said would trim, clip, and manicure nails perfectly and promised to sell like hotcakes. This image is from The Iron Age: A Review of the Hardware, Iron, Machinery, and Metal Trades.
The 25 November 1903 edition of American Hardware Market ran an ad placed by the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company for hand clippers that cost slightly more than hand clippers that were on the market at the time, but did the job 100 times faster. They claimed their clippers were “packed in a small box” and that these clippers “will sell like hot cakes” mostly because the “extremely low price brings it within the reach of every man owning a horse.”
Usher Ferguson Linder (20 March 1809 – 5 June 1876) served as Illinois Attorney General from 1837 until 1839, and prior to that, he practiced law. Linder and (Abraham) Lincoln practiced law in affiliation with each other but they were never legal partners. Linder wrote a book, published in 1879, titled, “Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois.”
He wrote about many things, including the railroad schemes in 1836 and 1837 at a time when there was no railroad to be found in the entire State of Illinois, and no roads in Indiana that reached Illlinois. On page 59 of his book, he wrote this:
The enthusiastic friends of the measure, such as John Hogan, one of the members from Alton, an Irishman who had been a Methodist preacher, and who was quite a fluet and interesting speaker, maintained that instead of their being any difficulty in obtaining a loan of fifteen or twenty million authorized to be borrowed, our bonds would go like hot cakes, and be sought for by the Rothschilds and Baring Brothers, and others of that stamp, and that the premium which we would obtain upon them would range from fifty to one hundred per cent, and that the premium itself would be sufficient to construct most of the important works, leaving the principal sum to into our treasury, and leave the people free from taxation for years to come.
In “The History, Civil, Political and Military of the Southern Rebellion” by American writer, biographer, historian, and editor, Orville James (O.J.) Victor (23 October 1827 – 14 March 1910) published in the autumn of 1861 the expression was used in Chapter VI titled, “Progress of the Rebellion in South Carolina.”
Secession badges were worn by men, women, and children. A reporter present said – “All classes are arming for the contingency of coercion. Revolvers and patent fire-arms are selling like hot cakes.”
The reference for this expression was November 1860.
The 17 July 1839 edition of The Evening Post reported on various swindling offences that had made it to the police blotter. Among them was a report made by a Mr. George Welton of Waterbury (NY) who received a letter dated 29 June 1839 wherein the sender, M.H.C., wrote most insistently:
You had better send soon, as they will be all gone, for they go like hot cakes, and then there will be no more of them.
The scam was that similar to the Nigerian scam we hear about so often these days, where Mr. Welton was advised to forward an additional $27 in order to be refunded $300 for an item — an item that did not exist made by a company known as the Mechanics’ Exchange Company which also did not exist.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites American author and journalist Charles Frederick (C.F.) Briggs (30 December 1804 – 20 June 1877) as the first author to publish the idiom in his July 1839 book , “The Adventures of Harry Franco: A Tale of the Great Panic” which was written in two volumes, and where readers found this passage:
“You had better buy ’em, Colonel,” said Mr. Lummucks, “they will sell like hot cakes.”
Idiomation disagrees that this is the earliest published version of the idiom after finding this published piece that mentions hotcakes!
In the 24 February 1836 edition of the Cleveland (OH) Whig, on page 2, in column 5, the following was written:
While in a book-store in Albany, a few days since, we noticed a large number of Holland’s Life of Van Buren lying up on the counter. ‘These sell like hot cakes in this region, I suppose?’ we observed to the bookseller.
So there you have it: The expression was used and understood — and published in a newspaper — three years before the date the OED sets for its first publication.
In German, the expression is weggehen wie warme Semmein which means to go like warm rolls, and in French the expression is se vendre comme des petits pains which means to sell like small buns. Now this is important because Idiomation found a variation of the expression that dates back to 1735 and to Grimm as Darbennime, a pseudonym of Biedermann.
For, I thought, it would go away like hotcakes, and be a very big profit from it.
Idiomation pegs the expression to at least the mid-1820s based on the ease with which it was used in the Cleveland Whig newspaper of 1836 with a nod to the variation found that dates back to 1735.
As a side note, Bloomberg reported that the sale of pancake or hot cake mix has been on the decline for well over a decade now. Maybe having a product that sells like hot cakes means the manufacturer should rethink the product or how it’s being sold.
Historically Speaking 