As was so eloquently illustrated in BtVS, where Buffy held her open hand over her closed fist, this saying makes little sense. Yet, one assumes that it had to at one point or another. So, what’s the straight dope on this rather oddly imaged saying?
According to this site, it originates from the fact that if you have a large pile of money in front of you, you would grab the money with one hand and then transfer it to the other hand in order to leave the grabbing hand free to grab more money. This sounds a bit suspect to me, but it’s the only specific explanation I found.
This site says that the phrase “hand over fist” is “suggestive of sailors and fishermen hauling in nets”. This could be slightly more plausible since The American Heritage Dictionary says it means “At a tremendous rate”. Still unsure about that one though.
From what I’ve read while Googling, it appears that “hand over fist” is used in a variety of contexts, not just with “making money”. I see it also used in “overhauling the others hand over fist” and “winning awards hand over fist”.
Having also checked my Brewer’s Phrase & Fable, I can’t find anything there either. My guess is that a hand over a fist would hide the amount of money held in the fist, or that you’d be making money at such a rate that you’d need to use not just your fist but your other hand as well. Both rather flimsy guesses but that’s all I can come up with.
When one is continually grabbing at something, be it a huge pile of cash or a fishing net, at nearly any given moment one hand forms a fist around what has been grabbed while the other reaches out to grab more. Much of the time the open hand will be more or less over the fist.
The phrase represents the predominant image in a sequence of motions. You don’t grab one fistful, put the other hand on top of it, and just stand there like that.
That works for me. The image that this phrase always conjures for me is someone pulling on rope. Gary’s description above fits that perfectly.
The late, lamented Word of the Day. They agree with the rope-pulling explanation.
Huh. Makes it seem just ridiculously simple when you explain it like that… Guess it just shows that I don’t handle enough cash, huh? 