Idioms = archaeology for the curious mind

“He’s been through fire, water, and brass pipes” is a saying I’d come across many times in books written in Russian. It’s an idiom meaning that the person has passed some serious trials in his life (akin to “going to hell and back”). Intuitively, it always made sense, even if the brass pipes bit seemed odd. I mean, a person goes through fire (ouch), water (less ouch but still unpleasant) and then somehow goes through a set of connected brass pipes. Now, in my imagination, the brass pipes were some sort of cartoonish plumbing pipes through which the person had to literally pass, like in a Tax Avery cartoon.

I was 30-something years of age when I learned the real meaning of the phrase. All I had to do was Google it.

According to this article, the set phrase “pass through fire, water and brass pipes” is found in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian (I can verify it not making its way via the translation route to Lithuanian). In Russian, it probably appeared during the Patriotic War of 1812. And, contrary to my mental picture of literal sewage pipes, the actual expression refers to a trial by fame and glory. Brass pipes in the expression refer to fanfare trumpets that are blown announcing an important person entering the room. Or celebrating a victory.

Interestingly, I wasn’t the only one who came up with an interpretation of my own. Dal’s dictionary (a monumental multi-volume 19th-century etymology dictionary), for instance, has this variant: “pass through fire, water, and brass pipes, like wine." The reference here is to the process of making moonshine, when a mixture of water, malt, and other ingredients is cooked over a fire, the vapors pass through a brass pipe (coil) and are cooled by water.

Idioms in any language (including one’s own) can prove to be real rabbit holes. Learning how they found their way to the language can be an interesting exercise in and of itself, revealing things about history and culture that would be lost without the idioms preserving some bit of the past. Nautical terms, poker terms, cricket terms, and slang referring to long-gone professions and activities. All hiding in plain sight. All you need is an inquisitive mind, a dictionary (Google does the trick but nothing beats a hard-bound volume), and you’re guaranteed to find out something surprising.

Here’s, for example, a list of idioms I didn’t know had nautical roots:

1. All Hands on Deck - Originating from a ship's captain's call for all sailors to come on deck.

2. Batten Down the Hatches - Originally meant to secure a ship's hatch covers in preparation for a storm.

3. By and Large - This term comes from sailing, where 'by' means into the wind and 'large' means off the wind.

4. High and Dry - Refers to a ship that is beached or aground and therefore unmovable.

5. Know the Ropes - In the age of sail, knowing the ropes meant understanding what rope and knot did what.

6. Loose Cannon - Originally described a cannon that had become loose on the deck of a ship, potentially causing chaos.

7. Taken Aback - A term used when a ship's sails suddenly and unexpectedly are pushed back against the mast, stopping the ship's forward progress.

Nota bene! Learning idioms in your target language is good, but you are likely to misuse them at first. It might lead to some funny and maybe even embarrassing outcomes, like the ones I mentioned here:

Cherish your false friends

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November 21, 2023

Hello hello and welcome back to Babel Babble! You’ve all probably heard about someone who tried to say that they’re embarrassed in Spanish only to fumble and say that they’re pregnant. This is what we call a “false friend”.— a word that sounds similar in two languages but means very different things. In my language learning journeys, I heard and witness…

Still, knowing the actual idioms will at least save you from the embarrassment of misquoting “to put on a pedestal” as “to put on a pedal stool”:

What’s your experience with idioms? Do you have a favourite one? Or maybe you went for 30+ years imagining a completely different meaning? Share, share, share!