Real tales

SOME expressions peter away into dark oblivion when, after a while, they fail to come up to the scratch. Peter was not a verb, to begin with. The phrase came from the mining camps of North America in the 1840s. Peter is probably a contraction of saltpetre or potassium nitrate, used to make explosives. Peter or explosives were used to dislodge gold and silver ore. When a vein of precious metal was exhausted, the miner knew that it was pointless setting off any more explosives as the mine was "petered out".

To come up to scratch comes from the early days of boxing. A mark or line called the scratch was made in the middle of the boxing ring. As per nineteenth century rules, a boxer would lose the bout if , after being knocked down, he was still too groggy to walk on his own to the scratch within a period of 38 seconds. Having failed to come up to the scratch or not being up to scratch, he was declared the loser.

Many a casanova is accused of playing fast and loose with innocent maidens. Fast and loose was actually a popular betting game in the Fairgrounds of the 16th century.It was also called "pricking the belt". The game went like this: a long piece of rope or loosely-rolled up belt was placed on a table. A knife or long nail was then pressed through till it pierced the table. Each player then placed a bet on whether the belt or rope was fast or loose; that is, secured to the table or not. The stallholder often did a lot of cheating. Thus the game became a symbol of treachery and deceit.

Today, it is considered harmless and often amicable to pull someone’s leg but when the expression took birth, the original leg-puller was quite sinister and dishonest. A century ago, petty thieves and robbers would trip up their victim or pull his leg, render him defenceless and then strip him of all valuables. With the passage of time, the usage moved away from the criminal aspect. Anyone verbally tripping up a person would be pulling the person’s leg.

Tap-root

When a word from one language enters the lexis of another, the effect is like a pebble dropped into a pond. Sometimes, the meaning of the new word keeps expanding like the ripples in a pond. Hindi, too, has many such words from other languages. Chaprasi is one such word. In Persian, the Chaprasi was the person who carried supplies from one office to another. In Hindi, the word has today expanded in meaning through usage. A Chaprasi is today any employee not sitting at a desk in an office. His duties may vary from tea-making to dusting to transporting files to buying vegetables for memsahib!

— Deepti

This feature was published on August 28, 1999