[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 6 | February 15, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]
We know even less about the origin of idioms than about the origin of individual words. This is natural: words have tangible components: roots, suffixes, consonants, vowels, and so forth, while idioms spring from customs, rites, and general experience. Yet both are apt to travel from land to land and be borrowed. Who was the first to suggest that beating (or flogging) a willing horse is a silly occupation, and who countered it with the idea that beating a dead horse is equally stupid? We will probably never find “the author,” even if we catch the earliest citation in print or dispose of such idioms as so-called familiar quotations (a great wit may have coined one or both of those sayings or used the phrases already current and thus made them famous). Who in the past kicked the bucket and when? Who sowed wild oats, and why just oats? Occasionally I discuss such matters. Raining cats and dogs, pay through the nose, no room to swing a cat,whip the cat, and a few more have turned up in this blog.
While dealing with the numerous phrases containing the word Dutch, I ran into the expression to hang out the broom (what Dutch has to do with this phrase will become clear later). In England, a broom was sometimes hung out of the window to signify a family quarrel. However, one wonders whether the idiom to hang out the broom “to have fun while the master is away; to announce being cuckolded by the wife, etc.” goes back to this custom and even whether it exists in Modern English.