Andy Sullivan: Against the Grain

Wed, 05/01/2019 - 8:29am — Diane Dyer

We’ve all heard(and most have likely said) the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. What it means is self-explanatory. Where it originated is quite another story. Humans seem to have the urge to improve things. Prehistoric hand-axes were made by repeatedly chipping small flakes off pebbles of flint with other hard objects. Million-year-old examples of these have been found that give the impression of being ruined by being chipped just one time too many. That pang of regret we have probably all felt after spoiling something by adding that unnecessary final touch was first faced by Ugg in his cave.

The thought may be Stone Age but the phrase 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', which sounds as though it might come from the Roosevelt or Truman era, is more recent than that. This one is widely attributed to T. Bert (Thomas Bertram) Lance, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter's 1977 administration. He was quoted in the newsletter of the US Chamber of Commerce, Nation's Business, May 1977:

Bert Lance believes he can save Uncle Sam billions if he can get the government to adopt a simple motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." He explains: "That's the trouble with government: Fixing things that aren't broken and not fixing things that are broken."

Lance certainly did popularise the term but it seems to have been a colloquial phrase in the southern states of the USA before his celebrated use of it; for example, this piece is from the Texas newspaper The Big Spring Herald, December, 1976: "We would agree with the old Georgia farmer who said his basic principle was 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"

Preaching to the choir is another phrase we’ve heard forever. It means exactly what you think it would: pointlessly try and get a group to agree with your view with which they already agree. Another is “wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake”. This is basically that the person is lazy and won’t even do the bare minimum amount of work.

How about the phrase “Scot free”? Dred Scott was a black slave born in Virginia, USA in 1799. In several celebrated court cases, right up to the USA Supreme Court in 1857, he attempted to gain his freedom. These cases all failed but Scott was later made a free man by his so-called owners, the Blow family. Knowing this, we might feel that we don't need to look further for the origin of 'scott free'. Many people, especially in the USA, are convinced that the phrase originated with the story of Dred Scott.

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The etymology of this phrase shows the danger of trying to prove a case on circumstantial evidence alone. In fact, the phrase isn't 'scott free', it is 'scot free' and it has nothing to do with Mr. Scott.

Given the reputation of Scotsmen as being careful with their money we might look to Scotland for the origin of 'scot free'. Wrong again, but at least we are in the right part of the world now. 'Skat' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment and the word migrated to Britain and mutated into 'scot' as the name of a redistributive taxation, levied as early the 10th century as a form of municipal poor relief.

'Scot' as a term for tax has been used since then in various forms - Church scot, Rome scot, Soul scot and so on. Whatever the tax, the phrase 'getting off scot free' simply refers to not paying one's taxes.

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No one likes paying tax and people have been getting off scot free since at least the 11th century. The first reference in print to 'scot free' is in a forged copy of the Writ of Edward the Confessor. We don't have a precise date for the forges version of the writ but Edward died in 1066 and the copy was made sometime in the 13th century. Either way ie was a long time before Dred Scott got his freedom.

The use of the figurative version of the phrase, that is, one where no actual scot tax was paid but in which someone escapes custody, began in the 16th century, as in this example from John Maplet's natural history Green Forest, 1567:

"Daniell scaped scotchfree by Gods prouidence."

'Scotchfree' was a variant based on a mishearing. An example of the currently used form, that is, 'scot free', comes a few years later, in the English author Robert Greene's The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia, 1588:

These and the like considerations something daunted Pandosto his courage, so that he was content rather to put up a manifest injurie with peace, then hunt after revenge, dishonor and losse; determining since Egistus had escaped scot-free.

So, the first people to go scot free weren't from the 19th century but the 16th, and not American or Scottish, but English. (www.phrases.org/uk)

That’s all for meanings of phrases for this week.

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