Quick Hits on the Origin of Sports-Isms: From Soccer to Slam Dunk

00:00:30 Speaker 1: Modern day phrases and idioms come from a plethora of different times, languages, and regions. After all, there's literally an entire field of study dedicated to the origin and evolution of words over time ettymology. What I've always found fascinating and maybe a bit concerning is how common it is for these current expressions to end up meaning the complete opposite of the original. Take, for instance, the saying jack of all trades master of none. It's meant to describe someone who is proficiently skilled or knowledgeable in a wide array of areas, yet not an expert in one particular thing, and it's generally used in a slightly belittling way. The original expression, meanwhile, came about during the medieval times. Back then jack was becoming a popular nickname for John, and it soon became used in the same way that we would say dude, Like that dude over there or that jack over there, which also means an occupation like lumberjack was basically the equivalent of a lumber dude, which is just kind of funny. So the expression first began as a positive description of a dude who was good at a lot of different things. A jack of all trades the second half, master of none, which took it and made it a negative, wasn't added on until decades later, and there was also a third addition to the quote, and it's actually my favorite that one reads a jack of all trades is master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. The point is that time changes everything, including the meaning of words, so it's not necessarily shocking to find out that jack of all trades master of none has shifted from its original meaning after four hundred years of use, and that truth certainly holds true for sports idioms and phrases. We as in humankind collectively use thousands of expressions every day that were first popularized by sports, like slam dunk, knock it out of the park, or give it your best shot, and although some still mean the same thing the original did, many do not. Conversely, there's also a multitude of terms we think come from sports, but actually originated from something entirely different. On today's Quick Hits Upods of Sports dot MP three, I'll be exploring the fascinating stories and surprising origins of some of sports most popular expressions, idioms, and phrases. So, without further ado, let's get into it. I've covered a few topics on this podcast that center around the sport of soccer, commonly called football in most countries around the world. The United States of America is not the only country who calls it soccer, though there's also Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Those that use the word soccer have probably been called out or roasted at least once by someone from a country that refers to it as football, probably with a line that points out that the sport is mostly played with your foot, and often doubling down by saying that American football should be called eggball or handball. If you're a bit confused why I'm talking about the word soccer and not some famous sports expression like buzzer beater, bear with me for just a second. It's a fairly common belief that the word soccer is an American invention. As it turns out, the term was first created in England in eighteen sixty three, a group of men met at a tavern in London to establish a code of rules and regulations for the fast rising sport of football, which was played with a ball and your feet on a field. By the end of the night they had formed the Football Association. A few years later, another group met in London for a similar purpose, this time to establish the rules of a sport very similar to the one established by the Football Association, but with more use of the hands, which they ultimately referred to as rugby football. So the sport established by the Football Association was called association football and the other was called rugby football. During this time period in the nineteenth century, aristocratic young man at schools like Cambridge and Oxford had a habit of shortening long words into more concise slang. Rugby football soon became rugger, and association football started as as soccer and soon just became soccer it had a better ring to it. At the start of the twentieth century, the term soccer began to spread, not just in the UK but across the United States, no doubt because it separated it from the already established sport of American football. If you're wondering, yes, most countries that currently use the word soccer already had a different sport that they called football before soccer became popular in that country. So where does the gap begin. Well, While the Americans ended up adopting the word as their official name for the sport. The British began dropping the term from their everyday vernacular around the nineteen seventies and eighties, mostly because the Americans were using it too much and they didn't want to be associated with that, So there you have it. The word soccer originated in England as a slang term for association football, and was later adopted and popularized in English speaking countries that already had a sport called football. So yeah, if you ever get roasted for saying soccer, you can always say, well, you're the one that created it, so boom, there you go. Okay, next up is the expression saved by the bell. You might think of classrooms and a certain nineties sitcom, but the phrase originated from the world of boxing. The first recorded use of the phrase in text came from a Seattle newspaper article in eighteen ninety one, which described a boxer who was nearly knocked out and around as being saved by the bell. It was a quite literal expression, as the ringing of a bell signaled the end of a boxing round. Over many decades, the phrase spread into nonsports related avenues and vernacular, where it still exists today, and while that origin is pretty simple and makes sense, there's always more to the story, and in this case, it's that not everyone agrees that the term originated from boxing. Don't get me wrong. The majority of entomologists, researchers, and online databases tracking the origin of idioms and phrases tend to largely agree that it did come from boxing. But as with all things, there are a few anonymous Internet users who disagree, and I had to mention why these fateful few claim that the phrase actually comes from Victorian England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time when one of the most common fears among the populace was not giving your child too much screen time, but rather being buried alive. Here's a quote from President George Washington in seventeen ninety seven quote, I am just going have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than two days after I am dead, Do you understand me? Unquote? People were terrified of accidentally being buried alive. And it didn't help that narcolepsy, which could make people sleep for weeks and appear dead, was first coined as a term in the late night nineteenth century. To combat this, and by combat I mean profit off this widespread fear, people began selling safety coffins, a type of coffin built with a tiny tube that brought air inside and a string that, if polled, would ring a bell above the coffin, alerting anyone above ground that the person inside was alive or a vampire. The term saved by the bell was not referred to in this context at any point in time in any piece of paper or historical text that we can find. So while the idea is an interesting one, it's clear that the phrase we used today originated from boxing and not those safety coffins, which, by the way, did not once save someone from accidentally being buried alive, which might actually be a good thing because it means that no one was buried alive or the things didn't really work. Lastly, we have to talk about Chick Hearn, the man who single handedly coined dozens, if not hundreds, of the most popular sports isms we use today. Hearn was the play by play announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA for forty one years. To put that in perspective, he broadcast three thousand, three hundred and thirty eight consecutive Lakers games, most of which were aired on both radio and television. He's also the first ever broadcaster named to the Naysmith Basketball Hall of Fame, and for good reason. His rapid fire creative style helped define the future of sports broadcasting itself, and the evidence supporting just how massive his influence was comes in the form of a list, a really long list. So here's a few of the popular sports phrases and idioms created or coined by Chick Hearn. The bank is open, referring to someone shooting a ball off the backboard. He blows the layup, referring to a very easy missed layup. Air male special referring to a particularly strong, blocked shot caught with his hand in the cookie jar referring to a reach and foul. The charity stripe referring to the free throw line. He's got ice water in his veins, referring to a player making a clutch play. Garbage time referring to the last few minutes of a blowout game where all the starters are on the bench. My favorite, Matt Todor defense referring to a defender who lets a player go right past them. Too much mustard on the hot dog referring to a player that tried something a bit too fancy. Arm no foul referring to a fowl that had some physical contact. He's on him like a postage stamp referring to very tight defense. Throws up a prayer referring to a player taking a wild last second shot, throws up a brick referring to a player shooting the ball and hitting the bottom of the rim not a good thing. And finally, perhaps his most famous phrase of all slam dunk, referring to a player dunking the ball into the hoop forcefully. So yeah, just from that list alone, you can tell the guy was churning out phrases like it was his job, and I guess it kind of was. Also, it's very fitting that the man behind so many of these expressions went by a nickname. His real name was actually Francis, but he got the nickname Chick after his college basketball teammates played a prank on him. They gifted him a shoe box with what he thought were new sneakers inside, but instead it was a dead chicken. Yeah, it's a pretty horrifying prank, if you could even call it that, and probably a potential indicator that one of those teammates might have been a serial killer. At least according to criminal minds, sports aren't just activities to watch or participate in. They are living, breathing, constantly evolving mechanisms, a lens through which we can experience deep emotions and derive greater meanings from You can feel the devastation of a last second loss, even if your team is playing in another continent and you weren't there on the field, and even non sports fans can feel the joy that emanates across an entire city when that city's team wins a championship. Sports are a vehicle for human emotions, the highs, lows, and everything in between. So it's not surprising that we, in turn use phrases and expressions from sports to describe our daily lives. Idioms might evolve, meanings might shift, and words might come and go, because that's the nature of language itself. It constantly changes, and that's the beauty of it. I mean, who could have known that chick hearn describing a guy slamming a ball into a hoop would become one of the most popular colloquialisms for a job well done. All this to say, the next time you use or hear an expression that you think comes from sports, look it up. You might be surprised at how it came to be, and you might even learn something new. And that does it for today's Quick Hits episode of Sports Dot MP three. As always, I'm your host Will Gatchel, and thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with a new episode next Thursday. Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you next week. Peace,