by Dictionary Scoop
Have you ever heard someone say “I’ll have to start from scratch”? Ever wondered what “in the nick of time” means? What all these expressions have in common is that they originated in the world of sports.
Want to know more? Discover all those phrases you often say but didn’t know are related to games and sports!
1–Down to the wire
Down to the wire is an idiom used to describe a situation, sporting or otherwise, whose outcome is not decided until the very last minute. This expression comes from horse racing and experts suggest it originated in America in the late 19th century.
Before the days of televised sports, racetracks would string a wire across the finishing line above the riders’ heads. A steward would then be placed at a vantage point, looking down the line so that a winner could be more easily established during neck-and-neck finishes. The first written record of the phrase can be found in an 1889 article from Scribers Magazine and is still widely used today.
2–At the drop of a hat
You’ve probably used this expression many times, but did you know it has a sport-related origin? The phrase can be easily traced back to the 19th century when sporting referees, who usually wore hats, would raise one into the air, alerting competitors to be ready. Then, they would drop it to signal the start of the event.
The method was commonly used in boxing and horseracing, where the races or matches were considered started “at the drop of a hat.”
Nowadays, the phrase is used to imply something would be carried out immediately, without delay. It is sometimes thought to be of American origin but the practice has long been used by English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic.
3–Wild goose chase
Have you ever embarked on a foolish and hopeless search for something unattainable? Then probably, even figuratively, you were involved in a wild goose chase. A wild goose chase is a fruitless pursuit with no hope of a successful outcome and was coined in England in the late 16th century.
Back in the 1500s, it was an expression used in relation to a kind of equestrian sport in which all the competitors had to follow accurately the course of the leader at definite intervals, like a flight of wild geese. The term was regularly applied to the sport but it appears to have been Shakespeare who altered the meaning to one of hopeless pursuit.
4–Start from scratch
To start from scratch is a saying we use to illustrate starting again from the beginning, regardless of how much we have already achieved of a task. However, in medieval times it had a more literal meaning.
Back then, in certain sports like cricket, horse racing, or boxing, a line or mark was “scratched” into the ground by either a sword or a javelin to indicate the point from which competitors had to start. If they cut corners, they would have to start again from this scratch.
Over the years this idiom has been shortened to from scratch and is also used to indicate that we are going to start something with no assistance, for example, a recipe that we make using every ingredient raw instead of processed foods.
5–In the nick of time
When something gets done in the nick of time it has been done at the very last possible minute, before it was too late. Achieving things just at the critical moment can make us nervous, but when it comes to sports, scoring just before the clock determines the end of the game can change the mood of more than one fan.
In this case, nick is used in the sense of “the precise moment of an occurrence or an event.” However, the literal form of the phrase dates from the late 16th century when a tallyman would keep the scores for team games. This person would carve a nick or dent in a piece of wood each time a team scored and if the winning nick was added during the last minute it was known as the “nick in time.”
Tomorrow, get “the upper hand” be reading the rest of our list of sports-related idioms.
Page 7 