Scot-free

“To escape scot-free” means to elude merited consequences:

[Construction] Site Deaths Soaring as Bosses Escape Scot Free

No escape: independent directors won’t go scot free

Now all the doctors at Mid Staffs escape scot-free over deaths.

In the Middle Ages a scot was a tax or tribute paid by a feudal tenant to his lord. The word derives from a Scandanavian word meaning tribute. It came to stand for different kinds of payments levied for services. In Kent and Sussex, the scot was a tax for the maintenance of drainage systems and flood prevention. In some contexts the scot was simply the bill owed for drinks or entertainment.

Explanations of the expression scot-free may be found on numerous web sites. Most of the sites I’ve browsed correctly trace the term to the word for a tax, but a few cling to a mistaken idea that the expression has something to do with the 1857 US Supreme Court ruling known as the “Dred Scott Decision.” For example, this confident explanation:

It’s spelt scott-free and refers to a famous US Supreme Court decision involving the black slave Dred Scott. Ironically Scott lost his suit, though you wouldn’t know it from the well-known phrase.

The misspelling scott occurs both as an error and as a play on the name of someone named Scott. For example:

Lincoln’s Assassin Got Away Scott Free (misspelled headline at YouTube)

‘American Idol’ recap: Getting off Scott-free (The reference is to a contestant named Scott MacIntyre.)

The lingering association of scot-free with Dred Scott is probably owing to vague recollections of high school history: a man named Scott wanted to be free. To refresh your memory, here’s a recap of what the Dred Scott Decision was about:

In 1846, Dred Scott, then 47 years old, sued the Missouri state government on behalf of his wife, two daughters, and himself; the suit contended that they were being illegally held in slavery.

Scott was born into slavery in Alabama. When he was about 30, he was sold to an Army doctor in Missouri. During the following years, Scott married, fathered two daughters, and lived at different times in the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Scott’s lawsuit contended that residence in a free state conferred freedom. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court where, in 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote the majority opinion: the Scotts were property and property rights were protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Although Dred Scott lost his case, he did not die in slavery. His owner’s widow married an abolitionist who returned the family to Scott’s original owner. The former slave owner had since moved to Missouri and become an abolitionist; he freed Scott, his wife, and their two daughters. Dred Scott died of tuberculosis after enjoying only seventeen months of freedom. His wife Harriet survived him by eighteen years.

The Indispensable ‘Get’

I’ve been amusing myself lately by eavesdropping on people, listening for the use of the wordget. I’ve concluded that get is as necessary to English speakers as the verb to be.

The most common synonyms for the verb get are receive, obtain, and buy:

I get the daily paper. (receive)
Next month I will get my first raise in salary. (obtain)
He got a 45” television set at the auction. (bought)

In his sonnet “The World is Too Much With Us” Wordsworth uses get in the sense of “to accumulate wealth”:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

The verb get has so many additional meanings that I wonder how ESL learners sort them all out.

For example, used with the preposition on, get can have at least four different meanings:

How are you getting on with your studies? (managing, progressing)
Sallie gets on with her mother-in-law. (has a good relationship)
At 93, Mr. Biggs is really getting on. (becoming older)
Stop obsessing about the past and get on with your life. (continue)

Here are a few more uses of get:

Don’t get so nervous when you have an interview. (become)

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? (reach, arrive at)

I can’t get used to your new hairdo. (become accustomed to)

So he mispronounced your name; get over it. (forget it, let it go).

Now that everyone is in town, let’s get together for dinner. (meet)

I know that losing your best friend is difficult, but you’ll get through it. (survive, overcome)

I want my neighbor to get rid of his vicious dog. (dispose of)

She’s trapped in a dead-end job and wants to get out. (escape)

We hope to get away this weekend. (travel, go somewhere else)

I’ve tried and tried to master algebra, but I just don’t get it. (understand)

Then there are the imperatives with get:

Get busy! Get a move on! (Hurry up.)
Get lost! (Stop bothering me and go away!)

And these two, which have different meanings according to the context:

Get out!
Get out of here!

These expressions can mean “go away, leave my presence,” as in “Get out! I never want to see you again,” or “Get out of here! The dam is about to burst.” Or they can be slang expressions of disbelief: “You pay only $600 a month for an apartment in Manhattan? Get out of here!”

Listen for get in your own speech for a day. You may be surprised by how often you use it.

Food Idioms

A universal preoccupation with food is apparent in the many idioms based on it. Here are just ten:

1. apples and oranges: two things that are inherently different or incompatible. For example, “To compare The Chronicles of Narnia to the Twilight series is to compare apples to oranges.”

2. bad apple: a negative or corrupting influence on others; a troublesome or despicable person. For example, “One official of a national motorcycle organization argued that a few bad apples shouldn’t be allowed to ruin all motorcyclists’ reputations…”

3. bring home the bacon: to bring home the prize, to achieve success.

In American usage “to bring home the bacon” means “to earn the living for a household.” The expression probably originated from the custom/legend of the Dunmow Flitch. A “flitch of bacon” is a side of bacon, salted and cured. Married visitors to the town of Dunmow in Essex who knelt on two sharp stones and could swear that during the past twelvemonth they’d never quarreled with their spouse or wished themselves unmarried could claim a free flitch of bacon. Another possibility is that the expression derives from greased pig contests at county fairs. The contestant who succeeded in catching the pig “brought home the bacon.”

4. chew the fat: originally the expression meant to argue over a point, perhaps because people arguing make energetic mouth movements similar to what is required to masticate gristle.

In British usage, both “chew the fat” and “chew the rag” mean to argue or grumble. In American usage, the expressions mean “to engage in friendly conversation.”

5. cream puff: literally, a cream puff is a shell of puff pastry with a cream filling. In British usage, a “cream puff” is an effeminate person. In American usage, a “cream puff “is a used car in especially good condition.

6. cup of tea: something that suits a person’s disposition

The expression is used in both positive and negative contexts:
“A Mozart concert? Just my cup of tea!”
“A ball game? Sorry, football is not my cup of tea.”

7. a pretty/fine kettle of fish: an awkward state of affairs; a mess or a muddle. For example, “As the crisis dragged on to the eleventh month, Bishop Segun introduced a pretty kettle of fish to the whole matter when he instituted an ecclesiastical court…”

In researching this post, I discovered that the expression “a pretty kettle of fish” (with the meaning “a fine mess”) seems to be morphing into “a different kettle of fish” or “another kettle of fish” with the meaning “something else entirely.” For example, “Your website needs to be a whole different kettle of fish.”

8. a lemon: something that is bad or undesirable.

Anything that fails to meet expectations can be called a lemon. For example, “Her first husband was a lemon.”

Most often, the term is used to describe a car that has problems from its time of purchase. Individual states have “lemon laws” intended to protect consumers from substandard vehicles. The federal lemon law (the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act) was enacted in 1975 and protects citizens of all states.

9. full of beans: full of energy and high spirits. For example, this headline: “Hollins still full of beans as he settles in at Crawley Town”

In current usage the expression “full of beans” is so frequently associated with children that it has been adopted as a brand name by child care centers and a children’s clothing store. I’ve always assumed that the expression derived from the idea of a frisky bean-fed horse, but recently I read that at one time beans were considered an aphrodisiac.

10. hot potato: a delicate situation that must be handled with great care. For example, this headline: “Herbert’s ‘Healthy Utah’ Plan Could be a Political Hot Potato”

At Your Disposal

Some speakers, perhaps because of their familiarity with the word disposal in connection with trash, seem to have trouble with the polite idiom “at your disposal.”

For example, I saw this comment on a Yahoo forum: “If you are at their disposal, it is derogatory and demeaning.”

Disposal and its different forms descend from Latin disponere, “to set in different places, to arrange.” The verb has more than one meaning, including the following:

• to place or arrange things in a particular order
• to make fit or ready
• to make arrangements
• to get rid of

The noun disposal can mean the action of disposing of something. In the expression “at one’s disposal,” it means “the power or right to dispose of, make use of, or deal with as one pleases.” The notion that the person “at one’s disposal” is “under the command of another” is doubtless the reason for objections to the expression by literalists.

Language has its polite conventions, and most people can tell the difference between convention and sincerity. Literalists, however, object to addressing a letter “Dear Sir” and signing it “Yours faithfully” on the grounds that the language is “too intimate” to use with a stranger.

Taking the quotation a little out of context, I’ll let Dr. Johnson explain the difference between sincerity and social convention:

you may say to a man, “Sir, I am your most humble servant.” You are not his most humble servant. You may say, “These are sad times…” You don’t mind the times. You tell a man, “I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.” You don’t care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society”

Speakers who object to putting a person at someone’s disposal can still use the idiom in regard to an object or a facility. Here are some examples of current usage:

Rest assured that Alotta Properties, Inc. will be at your disposal for as long as you need us.

Anecdotal evidence is great and it’s even better the more of it you have at your disposal.

But, my good sir, why do you come to me? Your motive is most excellent, but an honest employment is the last thing at my disposal.