hail fellow well met

On easy, congenial terms; also, superficial friendliness. This expression, which has a quintessentially Victorian ring, actually dates from the sixteenth century. Presumably it began as a greeting, but by 1550 it was being used figuratively and so appeared in Thomas Becon’s New Catechisme (“They would be ‘hail fellow well met’ with him”).

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get a handle on something, to

To succeed in dealing with a difficult problem. Dating from the mid-twentieth century, this slangy Americanism alludes to coping with a cumbersome object by attaching a handle to it.

However, “handle” has been used both figuratively and literally in several
ways for many years. “Most things have two Handles; and a wise Man takes
hold of the best,” wrote Thomas Fuller in Gnomologia (1732). Further, “handle” has been a colloquialism for a title, and by extension a name, since
about 1800. The current saying, on its way to becoming a cliché, thus can
allude either to getting a secure hold on a slippery problem, or to identifying it correctly by naming it. A synonym for the former sense is get a grip on
something, meaning to take a firm hold on it. See also GET A GRIP.

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get a grip

Get hold of yourself, calm down. This imperative had several ear- lier meanings; one, dating from the 1940s in the military, was to put effort into what one was doing. Another, in college slang a few decades later, was to pay attention. The current meaning, however, is the one that has survived. In a Boston Globe editorial (Oct. 31, 2004) describing former New York City mayor Ed Koch’s complaint that the Democratic National Convention in Boston “had no excitement,” the writer said, “Get a grip, Ed. It was only our first one. Beginner’s luck.” The usage is the converse of to lose one’s grip, to lose compo- sure, first recorded in 1875 and cited by the OED. See also GET A HANDLE ON
SOMETHING.

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gentleman and a scholar, a

Well behaved and well educated. This term dates from the days when only well-born boys and men (or those who entered a religious order) received any education at all. Its earliest appear- ance in print was in George Peele’s Merrie Conceited Jests of 1607 (“He goes directly to the Mayor, tels him he was a Scholler and a Gentleman”). It probably was close to being a cliché by the time Robert Burns used it jok- ingly in his The Twa Dogs (1786): “His locked, letter’d braw brass collar shew’d him the gentleman an’ scholar.”

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garden path, to lead up/down the

To deceive, to trick. This expres- sion, often put simply as “up the garden,” originated early in the twentieth century and tends to suggest a romantic or seductive enticement. Often found in popular novels of the 1930s and 1940s, it is less frequently heard today. See also PRIMROSE PATH.

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fair-weather friend

A friend who is faithful in good times but fails you in time of trouble. It is the opposite of a FRIEND IN NEED IS A FRIEND INDEED.
The transfer of “fair weather” to “good times” presumably occurred long
before, but the adjectival application to a friend of dubious loyalty did not
take place until the early eighteenth century.

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fair to middling

So-so, moderately good, a reply to “How are you?” Since “fair” and “middling” here mean the same thing—that is, pretty good or mediocre—the expression is basically jocular. It originated in the mid- nineteenth century, probably in America. An early citation in the OED is from Artemus Ward’s His Travels (“The men are fair to middling,” 1865). See also CAN’T COMPLAIN.

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fair shake, a

An equitable opportunity or treatment. An Americanism dating from the early nineteenth century, the term probably alludes to the shaking of dice, but was soon transferred. An 1830 issue of the Central Watchtower and Farmer’s Journal, a Kentucky publication, had it, “Any way that will be a fair shake.”

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fair sex, the

Females in general. This cliché, which is rapidly dying out, is a direct translation of the French le beau sexe, a phrase popularized by the English journalists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (“That sex which is therefore called fair,” The Spectator, 1712). It was already a cliché by the time Arthur Conan Doyle (The Second Stain, 1905) put it in Sherlock
Holmes’s mouth: “Now Watson, the fair sex is your department.”

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eat crow/humble pie/dirt, to

To acknowledge an embarrassing error and humiliatingly abase oneself. All these expressions date from the early nine- teenth century, eating crow from America and eating humble pie and dirt from Britain. The origin of the first is not known, although it is generally acknowl- edged that the meat of a crow tastes terrible. A story cited by Charles Funk and published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1888 claims that toward the end of the War of 1812, during a temporary truce, an American went hunting and by accident crossed behind the British lines, where he shot a crow. He was caught
by an unarmed British officer who, by complimenting him on his fine shooting, persuaded him to hand over his gun. The officer then pointed the gun and said that as punishment for trespassing the American must take a bite out of the crow. The American obeyed, but when the officer returned his gun, he took his revenge and made the Briton eat the rest of the bird.
The source of humble pie is less far-fetched; it is a corruption of (or pun on) umble-pie, “umbles” being dialect for the heart, liver, and entrails of the deer, which were fed to the hunt’s beaters and other servants while the lord and his guests ate the choice venison. This explanation appeared in 1830 in Vocabulary of East Anglia by Robert Forby.
The analogy to eating dirt is self-evident. It appeared in Frederick W.
Farrar’s Julian Home (1859): “He made up for the dirt they had been eating
by the splendour of his entertainment.”

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easy street, on

Very well off, financially secure. This phrase uses easy in the sense of “in comfortable circumstances,” a usage dating from about 1700. The phrase itself came into use about two hundred years later.

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easy come, easy go

What is readily achieved or gained is also readily lost. This principle was noted hundreds of years ago by the Chinese sage Chuang-tsze (“Quickly come and quickly go,” c. 400 B.C.) and appears sev- eral times in Chaucer’s writings—for example, “As lightly as it comth, so wol we spende” (The Pardoner’s Tale). “Light come, light go” is also in John Heywood’s 1546 proverb collection. Easy was substituted for lightly and quickly in the nineteenth century.

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easy as rolling off a log

Not difficult; requiring little or no effort. One writer claims that this term, which is American, dates from colonial times, but the earliest written records date from the 1830s. Mark Twain used it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889): “I could do it as easy as rolling off a log.” The analogy, no doubt, is to remain standing on a log floating downstream, which is no easy feat. Indeed, it is sometimes put as easy as falling off a log. See also DUCK SOUP; EASY AS PIE.

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dead heat, in a

Tied for first place. The term comes from horse-racing, in which “heat” used to mean simply a race (today its meaning is a bit more specific). It was in use by the late eighteenth century (“The whole race was run head and head, terminating in a dead heat,” Sporting Magazine, 1796). It later was applied to any contest in which there was a tie.

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dead from the neck up

Extremely stupid. This slangy metaphor was first recorded in 1911. John Dos Passos used it in Forty-second Parallel (1930): “Most of the inhabitants are dead from the neck up.”

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