The other day I heard someone use the expression “put your John Hancock here.” I’ve obviously heard that phrase used many time in my life just like everyone else. It’s a commonly-used idiom that means “please put your signature on this document.” The phrase is an allusion to John Hancock, the first signator to the Declaration of Independence, who deliberately made his signature on that document excessively prominent so that King George would be able to read his name. It was a “fuck you” to the British monarch on top of a “fuck you” to the British monarch. And it had resonance. So much so that almost 250 years later, we’re still referencing it in our daily speech.
As significant as Hancock’s act is from a historical perspective, the phrase it spawned is antiquated. It’s one of those hokey grandmaisms like “get off your high horse” or “living high on the hog” that has been repeated so often that it is now engrained in our vernacular. Use any of those phrases with the current generation and you’ll get a blank stare. Not because they don’t know about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s just that riding on a big horse or eating the best parts of a pig doesn’t carry the cache’ it once did. And events that happened hundreds of years ago have no relevance to day-to-day contemporary life. Progressive Insurance Company recognizes this and pokes fun at it in its “becoming your parents” commercials. And yet, those dumb phrases are still forced on our youth by continued and repeated usage.
Which brings me to “it’s the best thing since sliced bread,” an idiom that means something is exceptionally good, innovative, and useful. The phrase dates back to 1928 when a guy named Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented a machine that would slice whole loaves of bread. Before that, bread was sold in uncut loafs that your granny had to slice manually. Rohwedder’s device was a seismic development that liberated folks from the burden and drudgery of having to actually slice a piece of bread. In fact, the invention was apparently such a monumental achievement of innovation and good old American know-how that we started using it as a benchmark for excellence and utility by adoption of the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread.” And we’re still using it almost 100 years later.
Here’s the really comical thing about that. The benchmark here is sliced bread. And the subtext of the saying is that there have been no innovations that have been as monumental to human kind as the bread-slicing machine. Not electric automobiles. Not flat screen televisions. Not the internet. Not streaming. Not smart phones. Not even paved streets. Instead, bread. All of those inventions have been trumped in importance, innovation, utility, and creativity by a slice of bread. If that wasn’t the case, we’d all be saying “it’s the best thing since the internet” instead.
There’s a whole host of silly idioms derived from the past that are just as prevalent – close but no cigar, jumping on the bandwagon, take it with a grain of salt, keep your nose to the grindstone, and many, many more. They are all woefully outdated and harken back to a pre-industrial time that no longer exists and few relate to. So why do we parrot pilgrims, pioneers, and homesteaders that rode around on low horses, ate the shittiest part of the hog, and had to cut their own bread? Our vocabulary should reflect our time, not theirs. So rise up and rebel my brothers and sisters! Banish those musty old sayings to the place they rightfully belong: the history books.
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