The surprisingly sinister history of some of Britain's most commonly used phrases

[dipsydoodle]

Are you pulling my leg? The surprisingly sinister history of some of Britain's most commonly used phrases.

'Gone to pot' dates back to a time when boiling a criminal to death was a legal punishment, while 'pulling someone's leg' came into use at a time when London was rife with thieves who tackled their victims by pulling them to the ground by their leg.

The saying 'meeting a deadline' refers to a line drawn by soldiers during the American Civil War to deter inmates from trying to escape - those attempting to cross it would be shot in the head.

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Today, applying a 'rule of thumb' suggests a practical approach to problem solving, but it originally referred to a violent method of settling marital disputes.

A judge, Sir Francis Buller, ruled 'a man was entitled to beat his wife with a stick provided it was no thicker than his thumb', the Glasgow Herald stated in 1886.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388615/Are-pulling-leg-The-surprisingly-sinister-origins-commonly-used-phrases.html#ixzz2bbxvxtoE

[BlueJazz]

1. " beat his wife with a stick" Geez....THAT was a fun time for the Female half..

[grasswire]

2. I wonder about "sod off"

??

[Igel]

3. Lots of slang are old sex words.

From "blue" to things like "sod off"--"sod" being a truncated form of "sodom(y)".

"Punk" was originally a female prostitute; it got shifted to male prostitutes, who were typically passive; and from there to weak, scrawny "inexperienced" males in general by the 1920s.

A fair number of them couldn't be "properly" coined and spread today because they were words that were derogatory and involved homosexuality.

Others come from Cockney rhyming slang.

Some are just amusing. "Pussy" wasn't obscene in the mid 1700s. It was "pochet", French for "pocket." From there it got attached to purses. And other "sacs"associated with females that were used for holding things. Once the shift to "vagina" started all other uses pretty much became verboten in polite society. "Pussy-cat" was kept, oddly, possibly because of "Puss'n Boots" or because it was a toddler word.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Alt. possible origin of "sod off" here

Sod-off is thought to derive "from the Middle Ages with the turf-dwellers of Romford (Essex on the poor side of London). These hard working peasant folk lived in low grass covered houses on the banks of the Thames.
In order to enter or leave one of these Squatts as they were known, a piece of turf or sod would be lifted away from the door opening. The term "sod off" was thus coined to mean "The door is open, feel free to leave".
This term eventually replaced such phrases as "Well, don't let me keep you", "My, is that the time?" and "We must have lunch together one day".

http://rasmus79.blogspot.co.uk/2005/02/origin-of-word-sod-off.html

The one you quoted was definitely from Partridge.

Neither really explain other common "sod" expressions like Sod's law aka Murphy's law.

[Igel]

4. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Before boiling to death was a legal punishment the phrase "go to pot" was already in use. Once an animal is decrepit and of no use, it went to pot. And surfaced as stew. Notice the writer is cagey--he doesn't say that death penalty method was the origin of the phrase. They just date back to about the same time. The reader's led to infer that one is the origin of the other. Pusillanimous twit.

"Deadline" took a 60-year break in usage if it's really the Civil War term. How the meaning's line up is also a bit sketchy.

"Rule of thumb" is a myth.It's the standard myth and is referred to officially as though it were fact--but people routinely call things that are false true. By the 1700s people were referring to this mythical "stick width" as the origin of the phrase, but every place it's alleged by myth to have been used the laws were to the contrary--you weren't allowed to beat your wife. Even Buller, a real person, was mocked in a satirical cartoon as having issued the ruling; there's no evidence he actually did so and it's likely he never did. Satire need not be veridical to be considered "true"--truthiness may be a recent word but it's not a recent idea.

At the same time a variety of languages in Western Europe have the phrase and, as expected if the "stick" origin is a folk etymology, have no such myth associated with it. Most likely woodworkers didn't measure with a ruler but used their thumb as their rule.


"To pull one's leg" is mixed up with a bunch of "pulling" phrases that meant to exaggerate or play a trick that date back nearly 200 years now. It came into widespread use when tackling and robbing was a practice--but association doesn't mean causation. There's no evidence it was first applied to the practice of robbers and then got transferred to playing a prank. This is the same weaselly trick used with "go to pot"--instead of making a claim, the writer sets us up for an inference. It's like leading a horse to water as usual after a ride and then expressing dismay when he drinks.