By: Matt Love,
on 1/16/2013
I've had three Deep Throats in my Oregon literary career. Each put me on to something incredible that enriched my recounting of modern Oregon history. For the uninitiated, Deep Throat was the code name of the legendarily secret source who helped Woodward and Bernstein unravel Watergate and overthrow a paranoid criminal in the White House, [...]
By: Lauren,
on 10/27/2010
Introduction. In 1984, old newspapers were regularly rewritten, to conform to the political demands of the day. With the Internet, the past is easy to alter. In a recent post, I mentioned C. Sweet, the man who discovered the origin of the word pedigree, and added (most imprudently) that I know nothing about this person and that he was no relative of the famous Henry Sweet. Stephen Goranson pointed out right away that in Skeat’s article devoted to the subject, C. was expanded to Charles and that Charles Sweet was Henry’s brother. I have the article in my office, which means I, too, at one time read it and knew who C. Sweet was. Grieved and embarrassed, I asked Lauren Appelwick, my kind OUP editor, to expunge the silly phrase. She doctored the text, and I was left holding the bag, but grateful to my friendly correspondent and to the volatility of digital means.
Words and Phrases
Pay through the nose. Stephen Goranson also had some doubts about the explanation of this idiom that I dug up in Notes and Queries and called my attention to an earlier publication. This time he did not catch me off guard. I have the previous note in the same (1898) volume of NQ and two more in my archive. A letter about the origin of pay through the nose appeared in the first issue of that once admirable periodical (1850, p. 421) and contained the following passage: “Paying through the noose gives the idea so exactly, that, as far as the etymology goes, it is explanatory enough. But whether that reading has an historical origin may be another question. It scarcely seems to need one.” Mr. C.W.H., the letter writer, was too optimistic. In October of the same year (p. 348-349), Janus Dousa took up the question and mentioned Odin and his tax. I suggested that the idea of connecting the English idiom with Odin’s tax on the Swedes goes back to Ynglinga saga, but Dousa quotes Jacob Grimm’s book on the legal documents in Old Germanic, which means that the information on the tax became known to the English from Grimm (which makes sense: more people could and still can read German than Old Icelandic). In 1898 (September 17, p. 231), J.H. MacMichael cited the 17th-century phrase bored through the nose “swindled in a transaction.” Bore did mean “cheat, gull” (the earliest citation in the OED is dated 1602; no records of pay through the nose prior to 1666 have been found). However, the connection between bore and nose does not seem to have been steady, and pay through the nose refers to exorbitant payment rather than a fraudulent deal. MacMichael thought that the English idiom “express[ed] payment transacted through an improper channel, as a ‘love’ child is said to come into the world through a side door.” I understand how someone can enter through a side door, but the nose is indeed a most improper channel for paying. The phrase needs a more concrete explanation, and I fail to detect a link between an occasional use of bored through the nose and the well-established combination pay through the nose. The full nine yards. The origin of this phrase has often been investigated. Numerous hypotheses exist, but none is fully convincing.
