Some common expressions and idioms in modern English date all the way back to medieval times.
Red Letter Day
This expression refers to a day that is important or special. It first appeared in The Book of Eneydos, which is a translation of a French version of the classic Roman work The Aeneid by Virgil. The French version was written in 1483, and it was translated and printed in English by William Caxton, with the sentence, “We write in our calendars the high festies with red letters of color.”
The reference is much older, though, dating back to at least the 13th century. At this time, the Catholic Church had established a bewildering number of holy days (“holidays”) and saints’ days, and there were also all kinds of rules about feasting, fasting, or resting on particular days (like Sunday). To help people keep track of what day was which, calendars were produced (at this time they were all hand-written and copied) with the holy days marked with red letters. This practice may itself have begun way back in Roman times (which also had a large number of holidays). Hence, a “red letter day”.
Devils Advocate
This expression refers to someone who defends an unpopular cause or who points out the flaws in an argument or proposition, even if they agree with it, just for the sake of clarification.
We know the history of this expression definitively. In 1587, Pope Sixtus V modified the process that was used to canonize Catholic saints, by adding a church official who was given the job of arguing against the canonization of potential saints by pointing out all of their sins or character flaws. Known officially as the Promotor Fidei (“Promoter of the Faith”), this canon lawyer was popularly called Advocatus Diaboli (“Devil’s Advocate”).
The office of Devil’s Advocate was eliminated in 1983 by Pope John Paul II.
Sink or Swim
This expression refers to situation in which there is a stark choice between success or failure, and one is left to one’s own devices.
The first appearance in print is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1368 poem The Compleynte until Pite: “Ye rekke not whether I flete or synke.” In the early 1500s the expression appears in English courtier Thomas Starkey’s England in the Reign of Henry the Eight as: “They care not (as hyt ys commynly sayd) ‘whether they synke or swyme.’ “ The idiom was then popularized by William Shakespeare, in his 1598 historical play Henry IV: “If he fall in, goodnight. Or sink or swim.”
Most of us have heard the most common story about this: in medieval witch trials, one of the methods of judging the accused was to tie them up and toss them into a lake or river. If they floated, it was believed that the “pure elemental waters” had rejected the evil, and the accused was guilty of witchcraft. If the accused sunk beneath the surface, it was held to be evidence of their innocence. And so this is where the expression comes from.
There is no actual written reference to this in contemporary medieval sources, though, and there is at least one other alternative explanation for the idiom’s origin. It has to do with the fact that England was a sea-faring nation. Life on board a sailing ship was dangerous and difficult, and the British merchant fleet–and especially the Royal Navy–was constantly in need of new crew members to replace those who had died or deserted. Since few people volunteered for the job, ship’s captains turned to kidnapping potential crew members by force. The involuntary recruits were, of course, completely inexperienced and were given no training, and had to learn as they went. As a result, they would sometimes fall or be swept overboard, where they faced the stark choice of drowning or saving themselves.
Curry Favor
To “curry favor” means to try to win someone to your side through flattery or false praise. The modern equivalent would be “kissing up” or “brown-nosing”.
The original expression is not English at all, and it did not come from either “curry” or “favor”: it comes from medieval French. In 1310, a clerk in the French bureaucracy named Gervais du Bus wrote a long poem titled Roman de Fauvel, which criticized and mocked the royal aristocracy using a herd of horses as a metaphor and centering around a stallion named Fauvel (Old French for “a chestnut-colored horse”). In the poem is a description of sycophantic courtiers who fawn all over Fauvel and groom him, containing the Old French words “corrier Fauvel”, meaning “combing the horse”). When this expression reached England, it was rendered into “curry favor”.
Hue and Cry
This expression refers to the act of a mass of people shouting in protest or displeasure.
Like “curry favor” this idiom came to English by way of the French, though its roots go all the way back to Roman times. In the Roman Republic there was no public police force or fire department as we know it, and the enforcement of laws against criminals and thieves was dependent upon ordinary citizens who witnessed the emergency. They were expected to raise a shout, known as hutesium et clamor (“horn and voice”), to attract the attention of the Vigilis (“watchmen”), who would then arrest the criminal or begin to fight the fire.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, medieval Europe still had no public professional police or firemen, and people still depended upon “night watchmen” to perform those roles. In Old French, the Roman phrase hutesium et clamor was rendered as hue et crie, and when William the Conqueror and the Normans brought Old French to the British Isles in 1066, this was incorporated into English as “hue and cry”. In 1285, the Statute of Windsor demanded that every inhabitant be willing to raise a hue and cry if they discovered a fire or witnessed a crime. The British hue and cry laws were not repealed until 1827, as London was establishing a publicly-funded municipal police force.
Scot Free
This idiom refers to someone who is guilty of a crime but who escapes punishment for some reason. The modern equivalent is “beating the rap” or “getting away with murder”. It has nothing to do with Scotland.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, it cost them a huge fortune, and they immediately began extracting money from their new subjects to pay for it. Teams of inspectors were sent across the country to compile an extensive list of assets and land-holdings (known as The Domesday Book), so it could all be taxed.
In Normandy, a tax that was imposed by the king or ruler was known by the Old Norse word skyota (“to pay”). This was transformed into the Old French word escot. So when the Norman conquerors started seizing England’s wealth, these forced taxes became known in English as a “scot”. This later took on the additional meaning of “contribution”, especially for something that benefited the society as a whole.
Of course there were always various people, especially nobles or clergy, who were exempted by royal decree and who did not have to pay any taxes. They were said to be “scot-free”.
Hidden History 