A multitude of idiomatic racing phrases have long since entered common usage – as Isabelle Taylor illustrates
Hidden in plain sight, horse racing expressions populate our everyday language. ‘Neck and neck’, ‘in the frame’, ‘home straight’, ‘a run for your money’ – quite simply, they’re everywhere, to the extent that we’ve forgotten that these idioms, phrases and adages owe their origins to the Turf.
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Sometimes the sporting link is clear, other times it is abstruse. Today we rummage through English idioms to explore how horse racing imagery has come to enrich our daily speech.
On your tod
American jockey Tod Sloan became one of the most controversial figures of the British turf when he thundered onto the racing scene in the closing days of the 19th Century. Sloan flouted many of British racing’s long-held convictions. He brought with him the so-called American seat – riding with short stirrups and crouched low over the horse’s withers – and the American racing tactic of racing from the front in contrast to the traditional waiting game played by British jockeys.
He was famous enough to inspire the Cockney rhyming slang, ‘on one’s Tod Sloan’, contracted to ‘on your tod’ to mean on your own. There are two possible explanations behind its origins.
It may refer to Sloan’s maverick attitude – he rode when it pleased him, accepting mounts only when it suited him, and he did not want to be tied down to a contract employer. Or, it may instead have been inspired by his trailblazing tactic of winning races from the front, when ‘all alone’ leading the field.
Starting from scratch
For much of racing’s history, race starts were a haphazard affair – jockeys vying for a spot on the starting line, false starts contrived to throw out the favourite, lengthy delays to reposition horses for a fresh attempt. The starting point was nothing more than a line scratched into the turf. If the runner’s hooves were correctly positioned behind the line, they were ‘starting from scratch’ – hence our modern meaning of doing something from the very beginning.
Give and take
In everyday usage to mean making mutual concessions and compromises, the phrase ‘give and take’ owes its origins to the 18th Century and races in which entrants were handicapped in the name of fairness.
The ‘give and take plate’ was the prize in races in which carried weight according to their height: seven pounds were taken from the weight for every inch below the standard height of 14 hands; seven pounds were added for every inch above that. We know such races today as handicaps.
The term was used metaphorically by 1778, where Fanny Burney wrote in her novel Evelina, “give and take is fair in all nations”.
Big Apple
New York in the 1920s was the epicentre of North American racing. The state had the most racetracks, attracted the biggest crowds and drew the largest handle. It was the place jockeys and trainers most coveted. To win in New York was, quite literally, to get the ‘big apple’.
The phrase was popularised by racing journalist John J. Fitzgerald in 1924, writing for the New York Morning Telegraph. After overhearing the term amongst stable hands at New Orleans, he wrote: “The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There’s only one Big Apple. That’s New York.”
Across the board
‘Across the board’ is used in countless contexts to mean applying to all, but it derives from a US betting term to denote three wagers placed on the same horse to finish first, second or third – or win, place and show in US parlance. If the horse wins, the person placing the bet collects the total of all three tickets. The board in question is the blackboard on which bookmakers used to write the odds before a race.
Hands down
Cruising to an easy victory in any contest, you are said to win ‘hands down’. The saying derives from the mid-19th Century to refer to the manner in which jockeys, when realising they had a clear stretch and victory was certain, let the reins loosen and dropped their hands to coast to a comfortable finish.
Get your goat
The connection of our next expression with horse racing is far from obvious. It refers to a practice used by trainers to pacify their highly strung Thoroughbreds. Goats were found to have a calming effect upon nervous horses and so were placed in their stables to alleviate anxiety and thus, the theory went, improve performance on racedays. Opponents wishing to upset this performance would steal the companion goat to ruffle the horse’s nerves (and no doubt the owner’s as well). Hence, the phrase ‘get your goat’ to denote annoyance or irritation.
Free for all
Today suggesting chaos and confusion, ‘free for all’ was originally coined to refer to a contest that was open to all. A Turf-goer in mid-18th Century England would recognise it as a race free to all those who wished to enter. Such races were, though, rarely without some restrictions: they may be free only to subscribers to a course or free so long as the horse had not won a large purse recently, or free only to entrants of a certain age.
The terminology migrated to the US in the 19th Century, and it was likely here in the latter years of the century that its meaning morphed to acquire its negative connotations. By 1881, for example, journalists were describing street brawls as ‘free for all’ fights.
Wild goose chase
The horse-racing roots of our final idiom have long been consigned to the history books. Alluding to a hopeless undertaking, ‘wild goose chase’ is one of the many phrases popularised by William Shakespeare that we still use today: “Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five,” complained Mercutio to Romeo. Mercutio was lamenting Romeo getting the better of him in a battle of wits, unable to keep pace with Romeo’s erratic play of words.
Elizabethan contemporaries would have recognised in the duo’s badinage a reference to a type of horse race called a ‘wild goose chase’. One rider would gallop out across an open field, pursued by other riders following his course at set distances. The leader would twist and turn wildly, looking to throw off the pack. Not only were they expected to trace his path, but they were required to do so in formation, just as a skein of geese neatly trace a V-shape in the sky.
The horse-riding sense of the phrase continued in use until the late 17th Century, but thereafter passed out of memory.
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REFERENCES
J. Chetwynd (2016), The Field Guide to Sports Metaphors: A Compendium of Competitive Words and Idioms, New York: Ten Speed Press
J. Dizikes (2000), Yankee Doodle Dandy: the life and times of Tod Sloan, New Haven: Yale University Press
C. McNairn (2017), Sports Talk, Altona: FriesenPress
J. Kroessler (2009), The Greater New York Sports Chronology, New York: Columbia University Press
R. G. Alvey (1992), Kentucky Bluegrass Country, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi