Origins

Camping Out

by Dalya Goldberger

Miss Hoopty and Delilah are setting up camp at Wilderness Tours in Beachburg, Ontario, for a week of camping and whitewater rafting.

"Miss Hoopty, it’s May. It’s too cold to be camping. How can you be so gung ho about this?" whined Delilah dragging her sleeping bag to the tent.

"BECAUSE IT’S COOL, JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT," said Miss Hoopty as she bustled happily around the campsite. "I KNOW YOU WOULD RATHER BATHE IN A POOL OF YOUR OWN SWEAT, BUT THE WATER IS HIGH AT THIS TIME OF YEAR. IT’S THE BEST TIME."

"Whitewater rafting gives me the heebie jeebies. I’m afraid I’m going to drown."

"OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, DELILAH! IT’S SAFE AND THEY HAVE GUIDES TO HELP US. YOU WON’T DROWN!"

"Hmph. If I die, it’ll be on your head," retorted Delilah.

After a cold night and many complaints from Delilah, the two women got up and gathered at the campground’s large wooden lodge with about 200 other campers for their first day of rafting.

"Hello, everyone! I’m Jake and I’ll be your rafting guide!" chirped our young, fearless leader, paddle in hand. "We’re going to have a great time together and I’ll bend over backward to make sure you have a safe and fun-filled day!"

Jake went on to describe the day’s agenda and rafting techniques with unrivalled pep, but Delilah interrupted him with a question.

"What if we fall out of the raft into the water?" she asked glaring at Miss Hoopty.

"I’ll make no bones about it. You might fall out of the raft, but if you do —"

"You see!" shrieked Delilah "I’m going to drown!"

Eventually, Jake and Miss Hoopty managed to coax Delilah onto a raft with 12 others and they were off.

Ten minutes into the adventure, the group came to a particularly rough swell of whitewater. A few rafters, including Delilah, stopped paddling and clung to the side of the raft.

Before Jake could shout instructions, Miss Hoopty flew off the handle.

"CHOP CHOP, PEOPLE! THIS IS MY VACATION! I’M NOT SOME VENETIAN GONDOLIER AND THIS IS NOT YOUR HONEYMOON — ROW!" she bellowed.

The frightened rafters sprung to action and made it through that spell of whitewater, as they would through many others that day, mostly out of fear of Miss Hoopty.

Back at their campsite that night, the two women shared their thoughts on the day.

"I guess it wasn’t so bad," confessed an exhausted Delilah. "At least I didn’t fall in."

"YA, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWFUL," said Miss Hoopty under her breath.

Gung ho is a Chinese term that means "work together." However, it took on a different meaning in World War II when Lt. Colonel Evans F. Carlson adopted the expression. The colonel’s men were a particularly brave, loyal and enthusiastic group; therefore, gung ho came to describe these qualities. However, when non-combat marines and soldiers displayed the same enthusiasm over matters as trivial as white-glove inspections, the term took its current and more disparaging meaning of overzealousness.

The expression heebie jeebies, for a feeling of nervousness, fright or worry, is believed to have been coined by cartoonist Billie DeBeck (1890 to 1942) although its basis is unknown. One guess is that it’s a perversion of the creeps. More likely it’s based on the name of a dance called the Heebie-Jeebies that was popular in the 1920s and that was inspired by a song of the same name. The dance is American Indian in ancestry and represents the incantations made by Red Indian witch doctors before a sacrifice.

For crying out loud is an Americanism first recorded in 1924, but that probably dates back earlier. The term is a euphemism that may have originated when someone started to say "For Christ’s sake!" That someone is believed to have been cartoonist Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (1877 to 1929).

Hello is one of the most frequently used words in the English language, but its use was not recorded until about 1883. In the form hallow, its earliest ancestor, the word dates back to 1340 and was used by Chaucer. The word is probably derived from hallo-er, an Old French word meaning "to pursue crying or shouting." Hello came into fashion with the invention of the telephone in the 19th century.

The term bend over backward or lean over backward stems from judicial reforms in 18th century England, which saw the appointment of many judges who were sensitive to the civil rights of accused persons. The new justices were in sharp contrast to older judges who were said to lean over backward, away from the Crown, when judging cases. They did this in order to prove how honest, fair and disinterested they were despite their connections to the government, they went beyond the normal and expected.

Make no bones about it means to speak frankly. The allusion is probably to a person not making any objection about eating a soup or stew even if there are bones in it. The phrase seems to be an ancient expression. Nicholas Udall’s translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrase of Luke in 1548 relates that Abraham, "made no bones about it …" when commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The expression to fly off the handle stems from the crude fit of handmade axe handles in American pioneer days to axe heads made in the East. Axe heads often flew off their handle while woodsmen were chopping down trees or preparing firewood, sometimes injuring the axeman or people nearby. The suddenness of this and the trouble it caused was a natural analogy for losing one’s temper and self-control. The term is first recorded in John Neal’s novel Brother Jonathan; or the New Englanders in 1825, but isn’t known in its full form until 1844.

Nineteenth century traders, noticing how quickly the Chinese ate with chopsticks, adopted the English pidgin expression chop chop to mean "quickly."

Dalya Goldberger is Managing Editor of Writer’s Block.