I’m here with another fine collection of strange English idioms and their possible origins. Hopefully, you’ll find everything shipshape and Bristol fashion – one or two might even be the real McCoy.
For anyone who is new to Friday Phrases, I post a weekly phrase origin on my LinkedIn. To make the linguistic fun go a little further, I post a monthly roundup here as well.
Now, onto March’s phrases!
“the real McCoy”
💯 This one means something or someone is completely genuine.
?We’ve got quite a crowd of candidates this time…
🚂 The McCoy in question could be Canadian inventor Elijah McCoy who created a device for lubricating steam engines. His design was so good compared to the copycat products that quickly followed that people would ask if their engine was fitted with “a real McCoy.”
🥊 It could refer to boxer Kid McCoy. The story goes that a drunk accosted him once, challenging him to prove he was the genuine article. McCoy did so… By punching him.
⚔ It could have arisen from a famously ferocious feud between families called McCoy and Hatfield.
🍸 Or it could have been down to Bill McCoy, who smuggled such potent booze during the years of prohibition in the US that people started using his name as a byword for quality.
so would the real McCoy please stand up?
It’s hard to tell but my go-to sources think the phrase is actually Scottish in origin and began life as “the real Mackay.”, possibly derived from the “Reay Mackay” (the branch of the Mackay clan whose lands were known as Reay).
Certainly, the first print reference to have been uncovered is from a Scottish poem , Deil’s Hallowe’en (1856), which mentions “A drappie o’ the real McKay.” The phrase was used fairly often in the Scottish press in the following decade, suggesting that it was already pretty familiar to a Scottish audience by then.
There was an Edinburgh whisky distillery trading under the name Mackay which swiftly got in on the act, using “the real Mackay” as their slogan from 1870s onwards. Whether people were actually referring to the whiskey all along is unclear, though the brand must have helped it to spread.
“ship-shape and Bristol Fashion.”
⛵ This means something is tidy or perfectly in order.
This is one of those rare phrases everyone can agree on: it refers to the neatness and order required on board a ship, being very popular amongst the navies of the world for obvious reasons.
But to look at how we ended up here, we actually have to start by slicing the phrase in half.
“Ship shape” seems to be rather older than “Bristol fashion.” References to it have been found going back as far as the 16th century, with the first coming from Sir Henry Mainwaring’s fabulously named ‘The sea-mans dictionary, or, An exposition and demonstration of all the parts and things belonging to a shippe together with an explanation of all the termes and phrases used in the practique of navigation’ (1644)
“And for the rake aftward on, it being of no use for the ship but only for to make her ship-shapen (as they call it), they give as little as may be.”
The phrase seems to have extended from the ship itself to the state of order and cleanliness it was kept in pretty naturally over the years. 🪢
As for “Bristol fashion”, that appears to have entered the language around the start of the 19th century. It refers back to a time when Bristol was the second most important British port, after London.
I’ve found 3 possible reasons behind the phrase. The first is simply that Bristol was known for keeping its port, ships and/or sailors in good order.
The other two are to do with the geography of the port: because it’s on an estuary the approach was very complicated and ships were subject to ferocious tides while they were docked there. One theory is that ships from Bristol had to be very well built as a consequence, while the other is that sailors had to be very careful to stow everything properly or there would be an almighty mess to clear up. 🌊
People began to use the phrases together for emphasis (“this is neither ship-shape nor Bristol fashion”) during the 1800s and they’ve been linked ever since.
“beyond the Pale.”
⛔ This one means someone or something that is completely outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.
Anyone who thought this had something to do with buckets… me too. This is a safe space. 🪣
But as the spelling should have told me, it doesn’t. In fact, the “pale” in question is a wooden stake, used for fencing (and where we get impaled and palisade from).
These were often used to create boundaries or defences around bits of land and the word “pale” soon extended to refer to these barriers themselves (and arguably to what was inside them).
One of the most famous pales was in Ireland in the Middle Ages. Originally, the counties controlled by the English crown were surrounded by wooden pales and then a fortified ditch. The region became known as “the pale”.
Other notable pales from European history include the Pale of Calais (a region of France ruled by English monarchs in the 1300s) and later, Catherine the Great’s attempt to limit the freedom of Jewish people in Russia by creating “The Pale of Settlement” in 1791 (in that case, the pale was designed to contain, rather than to protect).
The first printed reference to this particular phrase that Gary Martin at the Phrase Finder could find is “The History of Polindor and Flostella”, a poem by John Harington published in 1657.
“Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk”
Unfortunately, the lovers romantic walk comes to a sticky end at the hands of some brigands beyond the pale, demonstrating the phrase’s meaning pretty neatly. The pale supposedly represented safety and “civilisation”, while what lay beyond it was seen as barbaric and dangerous. Anything could happen to you out there…
“The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back”/”The Last Straw.”
🐫 This one means the final setback or blow in a long line of them that finally tips things over the edge.
This one has always made me wince – that poor camel! But for the sake of strange phrases, let’s dive in.
Many people believe that the original of this phrase had nothing to do with camels or straws at all. Instead, they point to an old proverb about it being the last feather that broke the horse’s back. 🐎
Sources claim that the earliest use we’ve discovered so far is from a 17th century treatise by Thomas Hobbs:
“The last Dictate of the Judgement, concerning the Good or Bad, that may follow on any Action, is not properly the whole Cause, but the last Part of it, and yet may be said to produce the Effect necessarily, in such Manner as the last Feather may be said to break a Horses Back, when there were so many laid on before as there want but that one to do it.”
How the horse transmuted into a camel seems to be anyone’s guess. There’s some speculation that it’s a genuine proverb from a part of the world where camels were more common than horses. Other people think that it was changed to a camel to give it a biblical flavour or perhaps just a touch of exoticism. 🐪
As for the feathers turning into straws, we’re even less sure. Though I suppose it is a little more likely that a camel would be carrying straw (here referring to the stalks of grain, rather than the bendy drinking variety, obviously) than feathers.
What we can be more certain of is that the phrase starts appearing reliably in print from the 1830s onwards. The horse variant sticks around sporadically throughout the 19th century, though it’s no match for the romance of that poor overburdened camel.
Interestingly, in other parts of the world, the same idea is summed up with the image of a drop of water plopping into an overfull cup and making it run over. Much less wince-inducing. 💧
Now, I’m not saying that last phrase was the last straw… But it was the final one for this month. If you’d like to get in on the action for April, feel free to join me over on my LinkedIn. Alternatively, just wait for the multi-pack coming in early May. And if you have a favourite idiom, I’d love to hear it!
Anna Lodwick 