Close But No Cigar and other interesting sayings - an etymology thread

Speaking of pre-columbian European foods, just came across this article about a fruit known as a "medlar", but also by, um, other names:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210325-the-strange-medieval-fruit-the-world-forgot

Circling back to topic, here is an interesting one I am struggling to explain to my 13 year old daughter and 15 year old son - mind you they have NO CLUE.  

move the needle

1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree.

Should I look up the origin, or does someone else know it off hand? Personally, I'd rather get some expert opinion from 'all y'all'.  I'll mention that teenagers are the same all over the country, and mine are no different.  We are at the 'melting point' with getting them to live in to simple expectation (like showering and acting on simple requests).  

TheJmon said:

Circling back to topic, here is an interesting one I am struggling to explain to my 13 year old daughter and 15 year old son - mind you they have NO CLUE.  

move the needle

1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree.

Should I look up the origin, or does someone else know it off hand? Personally, I'd rather get some expert opinion from 'all y'all'.  I'll mention that teenagers are the same all over the country, and mine are no different.  We are at the 'melting point' with getting them to live in to simple expectation (like showering and acting on simple requests).  

 Without doing any research, my assumption on that phrase has always been that it's referencing gauges in a dashboard -- eg the needles showing the fuel levels, oil, speed, etc in a car.

And here is another one - 'Out of the Woods'.  I know what it means, but did it come from Little Red Riding Hood?  Was it a saying that originated because everyone lived in the woods and it was just dangerous? Is it related to that other idiom, 'out of the frying pan into the fire'? (will this make us start talking about food again?)

PVW said:

TheJmon said:

Circling back to topic, here is an interesting one I am struggling to explain to my 13 year old daughter and 15 year old son - mind you they have NO CLUE.  

move the needle

1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree.

Should I look up the origin, or does someone else know it off hand? Personally, I'd rather get some expert opinion from 'all y'all'.  I'll mention that teenagers are the same all over the country, and mine are no different.  We are at the 'melting point' with getting them to live in to simple expectation (like showering and acting on simple requests).  

 Without doing any research, my assumption on that phrase has always been that it's referencing gauges in a dashboard -- eg the needles showing the fuel levels, oil, speed, etc in a car.

 I agree, and think the expression refers to a needle indicating anything - whether it's the speed of a vehicle, the fuel gauge, the needle in an aneroid barometer, the needle on a voltmeter/ammeter/ohm meter, the needle on an altimeter, even the needle when you're sewing.

Unfortunately, most kids these days don't get to see a needle indicating anything - it's all digital LED bar graphs this time around.

marksierra said:

 I agree, and think the expression refers to a needle indicating anything - whether it's the speed of a vehicle, the fuel gauge, the needle in an aneroid barometer, the needle on a voltmeter/ammeter/ohm meter, the needle on an altimeter, even the needle when you're sewing.

Unfortunately, most kids these days don't get to see a needle indicating anything - it's all digital LED bar graphs this time around.

 Reminds me of the joke/meme, where someone shows their kid a floppy disk and they respond "cool, you 3D-printed the save icon!".

Of course that joke itself is an implicit anachronism joke as the 3 1/2" floppys of the icon were hard plastic.

My daughter thought I just made it up to annoy her.  I'm not sure what the equivalent is today for that expression, especially this year where the bar was so low for almost all normal expectations.  That's another one that needs to be updated - Setting The Bar, which makes me reflect on the whole college admissions 'scandal'.  It's really not 'breaking news' to realize something has to give in the arena.  

doesn't "setting the bar" refer to high jumping or pole vaulting?  That was always my assumption, but I never looked it up.

set the bar (high/low)

To establish an expected, required, or desired standard of quality. (Often said of a standard that is constrictive in being either too low or too high).

It's origin is in fact from high jumping or pole vaulting, but it's more an idiom used to compare things and peoples actions.  So for example, if someone does a particular thing well and you have to follow and do the same thing, they have set the bar/expectation high.  The opposite being school this year in general - as the expectations/bar was set pretty low, any achievements would be considered higher than expected.  

TheJmon said:

set the bar (high/low)

To establish an expected, required, or desired standard of quality. (Often said of a standard that is constrictive in being either too low or too high).

It's origin is in fact from high jumping or pole vaulting, but it's more an idiom used to compare things and peoples actions.  So for example, if someone does a particular thing well and you have to follow and do the same thing, they have set the bar/expectation high.  The opposite being school this year in general - as the expectations/bar was set pretty low, any achievements would be considered higher than expected.  

 That makes sense to me. I was never a high jumper, but did do track and would watch the high jumping, and clearing the bar meant the competition would have to also clear it to remain in contention, so the best jumpers are "setting the bar" higher each round.

If we want an easy layup of a joke, we could point out that in some areas, people seem to think the game is limbo...

‘Moving the needle’: think of compass needles/pointers. 
‘Setting the Bar’: I always equated that with the legal Bar and the standards required for admission. 

Just reading the way these phrases are discussed give rise to so many other possibilities for discussion, too. (And yes, I’ve also seen the medlar article )

Moving the needle - Old car gauges, as noted, also back in the day the power plant where my dad worked had what seemed like a whole wall of round gauges with needles.  Presumably so did other kinds of plants.  Lots of needles out there.

Exactly - We are all from an analog day, and it's sort of like describing scent to someone who can't smell or color to a blind person.  I was talking with my kids yesterday about turntables, because my 13 year old did not understand the phrase 'you sound like a broken record' and we were delving into records.  So today I mentioned 'moving the needle' and my daughter thought it was the needle on a record.  They still make car gauges with a needle, but kids today are more concerned with what kind of touch screen and bluetooth a car has.  I don't think they are learning about those gauges in drivers ed.  

Show of hands if you had any stereo equipment that measured gain with needles.  It's a long time ago, but not that long a time ago.  My darling daughter thought I might have owned a victrola, so I had to set the record straight there as well.  What do kids know of such a bizarre concept.  

Kudos on the limbo joke, PVW - that was a '3 Pointer'!   

PVW said:

marksierra said:

 I agree, and think the expression refers to a needle indicating anything - whether it's the speed of a vehicle, the fuel gauge, the needle in an aneroid barometer, the needle on a voltmeter/ammeter/ohm meter, the needle on an altimeter, even the needle when you're sewing.

Unfortunately, most kids these days don't get to see a needle indicating anything - it's all digital LED bar graphs this time around.

 Reminds me of the joke/meme, where someone shows their kid a floppy disk and they respond "cool, you 3D-printed the save icon!".

Of course that joke itself is an implicit anachronism joke as the 3 1/2" floppys of the icon were hard plastic.

 I used to have a colleague in South Africa, who enlightened me on the file savings devices.

We started with the 'Floppy Disc'

and graduated to the 'Stiffy Disc'.

PVW said:

 Reminds me of the joke/meme, where someone shows their kid a floppy disk and they respond "cool, you 3D-printed the save icon!".

Of course that joke itself is an implicit anachronism joke as the 3 1/2" floppys of the icon were hard plastic.

 Floppy disks .... I guess this was around 1980.  Friend was a professor in a college in Nigeria. She was visiting and saw me "carelessly" handling a floppy. She was scandalized because these were rare and therefore valuable in her school.

I gave her a few to take back.

Tires, same thing.  Used tires were/probably still are valuable. Her husband discussed accumulating used tires and sending them to Nigeria. Load a container - maybe ship it on the Ever Given and make some money. Problem was figuring out how to meet the container in port and pay the required bribes to the Nigerian authorities. 

Sirius/XM ch. 123 -- PRX

has a series from Ireland about the Origen of sayings.

I mentioned the compass as a way of current real-world experience your children might still pay attention to.  

ETA: remember in early science classes when we put needles into corks then floated the corks in bowls of water, and moved magnets around the bowls???

Your daughter's not wrong

TheJmon said:

So today I mentioned 'moving the needle' and my daughter thought it was the needle on a record.  

 If you get a scratched record where the needle is jumping back into the same part of groove rather than tracking along to the next section, you do move the needle past the damaged section.

TheJmon said:

Show of hands if you had any stereo equipment that measured gain with needles.  

Me!  But that's really a cheat's answer.  Some of the radio station consoles/desks that I've driven had stereo metering.  Older ones were only in mono.

Wow! Mono.  I bet we could come up with a veritable deluge of idioms around old audio and video equipment from 'way back when'.  When was the last time you heard someone say, "Let's cut to the videotape" or "Number one with a bullet".  How about "Top of the Charts".  

I still use, "It's got a good beat, but you can't dance to it - I give it a 5" from time to time.  It just elicits grows and the occasional, "Your OLD".  

An article dedicated to beautiful, and almost forgotten, words. Today the word is: irenic.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/01/isnt-it-irenic-its-time-to-bring-back-beautiful-words-we-have-lost (No, not a prank article)
Check out the para on how we’ve preserved negative states of being at the cost of their positive antonyms. I’ve often wondered about this and tried to use the positives in conversations only to have people stare at me weirdly.

I was watching highlights of the Mets and Keith Hernandez said,"My word." I never understood that one.

Pop Goes The Weasel 

refers to spinning wheels.  a part of the spinning wheel was called the weasel 

Came up in conversation -- laundry list.

Laundry is often an item on my todo list, but a list of just laundry?

jfinnegan said:

I was watching highlights of the Mets and Keith Hernandez said,"My word." I never understood that one.

Did only a quick search, but this explanation sounded pretty clever to me, whatever its accuracy:

God is the Word, so to avoid taking His name in vain, people said “My word” instead of “My God.” 

(A similar reason was given for “My goodness,” which has the bonus of an alliterative connection to God.)

marksierra said:

I enjoyed that cartoon. I remember my amusement when I showed my teenage son how to use one.

Another good entry from the blog that explained “up to snuff.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-history-of-laundry-list

DaveSchmidt said:

Another good entry from the blog that explained “up to snuff.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-history-of-laundry-list

 When I lived in the city and used drop-off laundry, I didn't keep a list of what I sent in. Could've started a list of things that didn't come back, or that came back in a smaller size or different color than they went in with, though.

PVW said:

 When I lived in the city and used drop-off laundry, I didn't keep a list of what I sent in. Could've started a list of things that didn't come back, or that came back in a smaller size or different color than they went in with, though.

You could have comforted yourself by accepting the idea that it’d all come out in the wash eventually. 

DaveSchmidt said:

You could have comforted yourself by accepting the idea that it’d all come out in the wash eventually. 

 That's putting a positive spin on it.