"A load off my mind" and other expressions that are older than they appear

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens, published in 1866, and ran across the sentence “What a load off my mind!” Used in the sense of “That’s a relief!”

I wold have thought that “a load off my mind” had its origin much more recently than that–maybe as late as the 1950s or 1960s, but certainly by the 1920s. It just SOUNDS like it. Maybe that’s just me, but my wife had the same reaction… Anyway, evidently, I was wrong. I don’t suppose Dickens invented the phrase, so I wonder just how far back it actually goes.

The book also has a character named Richard who is sometimes referred to as Rick; I would have thought that Rick was likewise a much more recently-developed nickname for Richard than 1866. But again, what do I know?

What similar older-than-you-think expressions have you encountered?

2

Dickens also used ‘fly’ as a positive adjective meaning skillful or attractive. way before its use in 80s hip hop culture.

3

Round here we’ve used ‘fly’ to mean a person who thinks of themselves as a bit of a wise guy type con artist and we’ve done it since the 1960’s at least but I suspect its a lot older than that

4

How fly of him! I had no idea.

5

I always thought of “blab” as a fairly modern sounding slang word. I would have guessed it was coined in the US in the 1930s or thereabouts. I was quite surprised to find that it dates from the mid 15th century.

6

Sticking to Dickens… The expression ‘What the dickens’ has nothing to do with the aforementioned author. It was used by Shakespeare (in Merry Wives, I think), so dates back to at least the late 16th C. Shakespeare is actually a mine for these things, I expect there’s a list somewhere of expressions he used which you might not expect to be as old. I’ll try and dig one out.

OB

7

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

:stuck_out_tongue:

8

“Fake News”

1894, or earlier.

9

I think “dickens” was an alternative word for “devil” in Shakespeare’s time (and continuing for quite a while after).

10

I believed Dickens also first used butter fingers, the creeps, and fairy story. For Dickens, using vivid slang and other current colloquial expressions in dialog was a way to characterize the people talking, and underscore their social class, occupation, etc.

11

Love Conquers All sounds like a new age hippy expression, but it actually goes back to the Romans - Omnia vincit amor, or something like that.

12

I’m reading Tom Sawyer with my son, and I’m impressed by how contemporary some of the tweener-boy slang sounds. Twain wrote this in the 1870s, but used the lingo of his 1850s Missouri boyhood. Chapters 13 and 14 in particular, when Tom, Huck, and Joe camp out on an island. They realize the villagers think they’ve drowned, and to learn more, they send Tom to sneak back to town to listen in on conversations — a “feeler” (Twain puts this word in quotes). I would have guessed “feeler” was invented by some political consultant circa 1980!

The book also has a few “false friends,” but funny and still contemporary-sounding:

[Joe says to Tom how great this camping life is.]
“It’s nuts” said Tom.

13

This one?

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It’s Greek to me’‘, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

- Bernard Levin

14

Bumping, because I’d like to learn about more of these.

15

OP again. It was a line in Bleak House that started the thread, and now it is another line in the same novel that is causing its resurrection. (I read the first half during the summer, then put it aside for other things, picked it up again recently.) .

The line is “Now, what’s up?” Having apparently the same meaning as we’d use it today, roughly equal to “what do you want from me” or “what do you want to tell me?” Specifically, the line is delivered by a police officer to a man demanding the officer’s attention. “Do you mean what business have we come upon?” is the response.

As with “load off my mind” and severl other examples in this thread, I would not have guessed that “what’s up” dated from the 1860s. Or likely even earlier, unless it originated with Dickens. It just has that modern feel!

Any others to contribute? I still have another hundred-plus pages to go in this one, so who knows, maybe there’ll be more examples from Dickens. Anyway, thought I’d share.

16

Most 19th century novelists avoided dialog of “commoners,” so, apart from Dickens and a few others, by reading these books, it’s easy to get the impression that everyone at that time talked like the Bennet family, and that suddenly modern expressions just appeared about the time that talking movies appeared. It doesn’t help, either, that Americans are such suckers for costume drama films made from Victorian novels, where the “Victorianness” is played up for Yankee appeal.

17

Here’s a list of 135 phrases which Shakespeare is said to have coined:

Listing just the phrases that start with A gives us:

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger

A Daniel come to judgement

A dish fit for the gods

A fool’s paradise

A foregone conclusion

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse

A ministering angel shall my sister be

A plague on both your houses

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

A sea change

A sorry sight

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio

All corners of the world

All of a sudden

All one to me

All that glitters is not gold / All that glisters is not gold

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players

All’s well that ends well

An ill-favoured thing sir, but mine own

And shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school

And thereby hangs a tale

As cold as any stone

As dead as a doornail

As good luck would have it

As merry as the day is long

As pure as the driven snow

At one fell swoop

18

Interesting. My take’s a little different. I’d guess the majority of “modern” people are well aware that the folks of the 19th century didn’t all (or always) speak in precise high-class English. If nothing else, the two best-known English-speaking authors of the 1800s would arguably be Dickens and Twain, who did an excellent job of recording and celebrating the speech of the common people.

What intrigues me, anyway, isn’t the notion that less formal expressions were popular in 1860s London or 1850s Missouri–it’s that some of these terms are still in use, and still viewed as less than fully formal. It’s fascinating to me that “a load off my mind,” “feeler,” and “what’s up?,” among others, have apparently remained in this never-quite-standard zone for a century and a half or longer.

19

Similarly, “the handwriting on the wall”. I never knew this came from the Bible (Daniel 5) until I actually read it.

20

I had read somewhere that Time Magazine coined the term “suburban” in the 1940s until I saw Wilkie Collins use it in the 1850s.
“Suburb” dates from the 14th century.