LANGUAGE MYTHS #5: Not enough room to swing a dead cat, Not playing with a full deck, Not worth a tinker's damn, Posh, Rule of thumb

 

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Not enough room to swing a cat (cramped quarters)

MYTH: The cat was the cat-o-nine-tails, the whip used to punish wayward sailors aboard sailing vessels. To effect the punishment, the quartermaster had to have enough room to swing the whip freely. Otherwise, the punishment would be far too lenient.

REALITY: Spare me! This is one for PETA to deal with. We’re talking about cruelty to animals here: grab a cat by the hind leg, swing it around vigorously, then let it fly in order to kill it or at least injure it badly.

 

Not playing with a full deck  (below normal intelligence)

MYTH: A tax was levied when purchasing playing cards, but it applied only to the Ace ofSpades. To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase the other 51 cards instead. Sincemost games
require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren’t “playing with a full deck.”

REALITY: There was a tax on playing cards, but the tax stamp was used to seal the entirebox, not just one card. This phrase joins a host of other picturesque ways of saying dumb, andnone is meant literally: not the sharpest knife in the drawer, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, his wheel is turning but the hamster is dead, etc.

 

Not worth a tinker’s damn (totally without value)

MYTH: In Scotland and Ireland, a tinker was an itinerant mender of household utensils. To solder a hole in a metal plate or pot, he would form a raised barrier of bread dough around thehole (a dam) to keep the solder from flowing where it wasn’t needed. When the job wascomplete, he would remove the dough and throw it away.

REALITY: Tinkers were generally a scurrilous lot without roots who swore without cessation. So many curse words flowed from their mouths that they were totally devalued; anyshock value was lost. In the early part of the 19^th century, it was “tinker’s damn.” The Victorians later tried to clean it up by turning it into “tinker’s dam.”

 

Posh (luxurious; suitable for the affluent)

MYTH: This phrase comes from ship travel between Britain and India on the fleet operated by the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company. P.O.S.H. is an acronym for Port Out,Starboard Home. A person with a cabin on the port side on the leg to India and a cabin on the starboard side returning to England had the best of everything: a cooling sea breeze and shelter from the unrelenting sun. Such accommodations were saved for wealthy frequent travelers, and their tickets were stamped with a P.O.S.H. designation.

REALITY: The highly specific nature of that explanation is what torpedoes it. ThePeninsular and Oriental Steamship Company absolutely denies the story; there were no such tickets. The most likely origin is London street slang, where posh meant money. It is possiblethat it was adapted from Romany (the language of Gypsies), where posh-houri meant half-pence, and posh-kooroona meant half-crown.

 

 

Rule of thumb (a useful principle, but one not strictly scientific or technical)

MYTH: In the old days, English common law allowed a man to discipline his wife bybeating her, as long as the rod that he used was no thicker than a thumb.

REALITY: There was no such law on the books. Stupid men beat their wives occasionally, but it was not sanctioned by such a code. The saying refers to rough and ready measurement:the length of the first joint of a carpenter’s thumb is about an inch long. Rule in this saying is a shortening for ruler. Likewise, a single pace covers about a foot, the distance from the tip of thenose to the outstretched fingers of an adult is roughly a yard, and horse heights are still measured by hands (the width of the palm and closed thumb is about four inches).

Raining cats and dogs (a driving, vicious rain)

MYTH: Houses in the Middle Ages had thatched roofs constructed of thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets—dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs—lived in the roof. When it rained, it became slippery, so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, “it’s raining cats and dogs.”

REALITY: There’s no question that bugs and mice and the occasional bird might live in a straw roof, but dogs and cats? Give me a break! And people in those days had wood- burningfireplaces to keep all creatures, great and small, warm. The explanation that I favor is that in 18^th century London (not particularly noted for its urban hygiene), after a torrential downpour,gutters would overflow with garbage, sewage, and dead animals left by the side of the street, allof which would be swept along as if they had fallen with the rain. An alternative explanation isthat in Norse mythology, cats and dogs were associated with Odin, the god of storms.