Hold your horses, origins of some common phrases

The origins of some common phrases

Get down to brass tacks

In old-fashioned drapers’ shops, brass tacks would be driven into the counter at evenly spaced distances to serve as handy guides for measuring lengths of cloth. From this comes the expression getting down to brass tacks, meaning determining exactly what is required, or in other words, getting down to the nitty-gritty. At the end of your tether

If you’re at the end of your tether, you’re exasperated and frustrated. The expression comes from animals being tied with a rope or ‘tether’ to stop them from wandering off. They could graze as far as their tether allowed them to move but once they reached the end of their tether they could go no further - no doubt feeling very frustrated by this if there was better grazing within sight.

Barking up the wrong tree

If you’re wasting energy on something to no avail, concentrating on the wrong aspect of something or accusing the wrong person of some misdemeanour, you might be told that you are barking up the wrong tree. The expression comes from the North American practice of using dogs to hunt racoons. This was done after dark and dogs were used to follow the scent of the unfortunate racoon and bark at the foot of the tree into which it had escaped. Understandably in these conditions, the dogs would sometimes make a mistake and quite literally bark up the wrong tree, no doubt to the relief of the lucky racoon who would ‘live to fight another day’

Catch-22

A catch-22 situation is a paradox or deadlock in which you can’t win. It’s a good example of a phrase coined in literature which then enters the language because it sums something up succinctly. Not that there aren’t other phrases that do the same job - you might also say that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t or you might talk of heads I win, tails you lose. Catch red-handed

If you catch someone red-handed you catch them in the act of committing a crime, figuratively if not literally before they have had time to wash the blood off their hands. Two similar legal terms preceded this expression - red hand and with red hand - but it is Walter Scott who is attributed with first using the expression in the form we use today.

Freelance

Anyone who works freelance today does so as an independent self-employed worker. The term was coined by Sir Walter Scott in his medieval romance Ivanhoe, published in 1820. The ‘freelance’ in this context was a medieval warrior who was free to offer his services to whoever was prepared to pay him, rather than having feudal loyalty to a particular lord - in other words a medieval mercenary.

Hold your horses

Meaning be patient or wait a moment the allusion is clear - horses that are skittish and ready to run must be held back and not allowed to dash off without a thought for safety.