The man who coined this phrase had already been pilloried and imprisoned for writing satire people took literally. So the next time he went after Parliament, he built himself an escape hatch.

On this episode of Appraise The Phrase, Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of “if the shoe fits.” It starts in 1705 with Daniel Defoe — printed in London under the pretense that it came from Danzig, credited to an author who didn't exist, because the poem was a direct attack on the English Parliament. Defoe names nobody in it. He just writes that if a member recognizes himself in the satire, that recognition is the reader's act, not the writer's accusation.

Twenty's read: he invented the disclaimer.

Then the phrase crosses the Atlantic. May 1773, the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, a city weeks from tearing itself apart over the Tea Act, in the one genre where anonymity did the most work. And somewhere in that crossing, the object changes.

Also: the Cinderella theory and why it doesn't hold, the 1773 subtweet, what Google didn't bother correcting, and a Dictionary of Misinformation entry that will make you check your own vocabulary.

0:00 Green Goblin, Family Matters, And A Late Submission
1:03 The ATP Intro Theme
1:42 What's Good: LA, Venice Beach, And Morning Walks
7:02 Shout Out To Mo And The Event
8:01 Today's Phrase: If The Shoe Fits
10:25 Twenty: It Went From Positive To Negative
13:07 Mario Wrote This Episode From A Negative Place
14:27 Shout Out To Kayla And Kinara Books
15:27 Nobody Says “Wear It” Anymore
16:19 You Already Have The Shoe On
16:59 Confirm The Meaning: Four Dictionaries This Time
18:00 The Last-Minute Submission Always Wins
21:33 Which Ones Are Negative And Which Are Neutral
22:05 Twenty Picks Two Dictionaries — A First
22:53 Unveil The Origin: 1705, Daniel Defoe
23:12 The Green Goblin Problem
24:41 Printed In London, Credited To A Man Who Didn't Exist
26:09 Defoe Had Already Been Pilloried For Satire
27:13 A Legal Deniability Device
28:56 “He Invented The Disclaimer”
29:38 Have You Ever Jumped In Front Of A Bullet Nobody Fired?
31:27 You Gotta Show Me My ID In The Film
35:14 Are You Slower To Anger Now?
36:07 Why A Point Of No Return Is A Good Thing
37:28 Crashing Out, And The Flu Game Meme
38:43 May 1773: The Cap Becomes A Shoe
40:23 The Defensive Character Genre
41:26 Hugh Gaine, The Printer Who Stayed Neutral
42:46 Influence Before Influencers
43:00 The Tea Act And A City About To Break
44:41 The Original Subtweet
45:22 Twenty's Twitter Era
50:25 The Cinderella Hypothesis
52:00 Why The Case Against It Is Stronger
54:50 Google Didn't Correct The Story Either
56:33 Pop Culture Impact: The Top Four
57:30 #1 Hamilton, Cabinet Battle #1
58:37 The Appraisal
1:00:45 Dictionary Of Misinformation: The Subconscious Isn't Freudian
1:02:23 Closing Thoughts
1:02:55 Shop, Partners, And Credits

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
Daniel Defoe, The Diet of Poland (1705) · Daniel Defoe, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) · New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, May 1773 · Hugh Gaine, printer · Alexander McDougall writing as “Hampden,” New York Journal (1773) · Giambattista Basile, Pentamerone (1634) · Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) · Hamilton, “Cabinet Battle #1” · Spider-Man (2002) · Family Matters

COMMENT: Have you ever gotten defensive about something nobody was actually saying about you? And settle this — is a subtweet a disclaimer or a coward move?

ATP SHOP — every phrase gets a grade. Some of them get a mug.
appraisethephrase.com/shop

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first person to say “against the grain” was lying. Not figuratively. He was coaching other people to lie, and the phrase was the lie.

On this episode of Appraise The Phrase, Mario and Twenty are joined by Kayla, founder of Kinara Bookstore in Tulsa, to unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of “go against the grain.” It debuts in Shakespeare's Coriolanus around 1607, in the mouth of Sicinius — a tribune coaching Roman citizens to claim they'd been pressured into their vote, and that speaking up went against the grain. They were doing exactly what authority wanted. The first recorded figurative use of the phrase describes someone going with the grain. Mario's name for it is inverted debut.

And the carpentry story everyone repeats? Every source on earth says this comes from woodworking. Gary Martin appears to be the only person who actually checked, and none of the early citations reference wood at all — the carpentry explanation only shows up after Shakespeare. It's not what you know. It's what you can prove.

Also: why the play itself is about grain, how a phrase gets rationalized backwards, what clickbait did to writing, and Kayla on opening a bookstore in the gap left when Tulsa's only Black bookstore closed.

Value is in the eye of the appraiser.

0:00 Gladiator, Holograms, And What You Can Prove
0:51 The ATP Intro Theme
2:30 Introducing Our Guest
3:44 Kayla On Founding Kinara Bookstore In Tulsa
7:17 Who Decides What The Rules Are?
15:11 Confirm The Meaning: Merriam-Webster
18:11 Twenty Would Have Written It Differently
22:28 Unveil The Origin: 1607, Coriolanus
23:33 Our First Hologram Guest Should Be Shakespeare
23:53 Sicinius, The Tribune, And The Coached Lie
25:47 The Play Is Literally About Grain: The Corn Riot
28:34 Inverted Debut: The First Use Was Inauthentic
33:47 Kayla Does Not Fly Southwest
37:54 Every Source On Earth Says Carpentry
38:45 Gary Martin Is The Only One Who Checked
39:51 Retroactive Etymological Rationalization
42:16 Seed Oils, And Things That Sound True
44:34 What Clickbait Did To Writing
51:39 Is Any Of This Real? Clickbait Meets AI
53:20 À Rebours, Bad Religion, And Garth Brooks
55:44 Evaluative Reversal: When The Act Stops Mattering
57:36 Do You Own “Going Against The Grain”?
58:44 Building A Space For Us, By Us
1:00:40 Twenty: Save The Last Dance
1:04:23 The Phrase As A Banner People Wave
1:08:23 The Appraisal: Power
1:11:12 Speed
1:12:07 Preference, Handed To The Guest
1:13:31 Dictionary Of Misinformation
1:15:04 The Kremlin Is Not A Building
1:16:11 Where To Find Kinara Bookstore
1:17:43 Shop, Credits, And Where To Find Us

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607–08) · Plutarch, via North's translation · Merriam-Webster · Dictionary.com · Gary Martin, Phrase Finder · J.-K. Huysmans, À rebours (1884), published in English as Against the Grain · Bad Religion, Against the Grain (1990) · Garth Brooks, “Against the Grain,” written by Bruce Bouton, Larry Cordle and Carl Jackson · Marion Nestle, NYU · Gladiator (2000) · Training Day (2001) · Save the Last Dance (2001)

GUEST: Kayla, founder of Kinara Bookstore — Tulsa's pop-up bookstore centering Black, brown, queer and disabled readers. Instagram, Threads and TikTok @kinara.books · kinarabookstore.com

COMMENT: Have you ever actually gone against the grain, or did you just say you did? And settle this for us — open seating or assigned?

ATP SHOP — every phrase gets a grade. Some of them get a mug.
appraisethephrase.com/shop

THE BRACKET — the board keeps filling. Tournament comes March 2027.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everybody thinks medieval pubs had cups with whistles baked into them. You blew the whistle, you got a refill. It's a great story and somebody made it up.

On this episode, Mario and Twenty are joined by Myron to trace the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "wet my whistle." The whistle was never an object. It was your throat; a usage running through Beaumont and Fletcher, where you could "cut your whistle," and all the way back to Chaucer in 1386. The cup came later, invented backwards to explain a phrase people no longer understood. Mario's term for it is retroactive prop invention.

Then there's the H. "Whet your whistle" shows up in Thomas Flatman's Belly God in 1674 and never leaves, because whet sounds more literate than wet — a 350-year hypercorrection that people still defend today.

Also: the requirements for a proper swig, why nobody can agree on what a thumbs-up means, the dietary guidelines dropping their actual numbers, medieval life as imprisonment by civilization, and a Dictionary of Misinformation entry that will change how you sit in meetings.

0:00 The Departed, Cranberry Juice, And A Phrase We Might Have To Retire
0:44 The ATP Intro Theme
1:33 Myron's In The Building
1:58 Spoke Too Soon About The Sports Teams
8:39 The Requirements For A Proper Swig
9:24 Preferably Over 32 Ounces
11:45 Ain't Nobody Going Out For Cranberry Juice
14:03 Myron Has Been In The Store Too Long
16:41 Unveil The Origin: Chaucer, 1386 (Content Warning)
18:00 "So Was Her Jolly Whistle Well Wet"
22:25 The Northern Clerks And Tolkien's Paper On The Reeve's Tale
26:41 Rules We Enforce And Don't Follow
27:57 Text Me, Don't Call Me
29:00 Don't Read My Texts In A James Earl Jones Voice
29:08 The Thumbs-Up Problem
33:20 Emoji Etiquette In The Group Chat
34:24 Confirm The Meaning: Beaumont And Fletcher, "Cut Your Whistle"
36:39 Thomas Flatman's Belly God, 1674
37:19 Wet vs. Whet: 350 Years Of Trying To Sound Smarter
39:25 The Dietary Guidelines Dropped The Actual Numbers
43:39 Myron Amends His Take
46:07 The Myth: Cups With Whistles Baked In
47:05 Twenty: Medieval Life Was A Prison
49:10 Retroactive Prop Invention
50:56 "Am I Gonna Have To Stop Saying Wet My Whistle?"
52:43 Myron's Hit List: It Is What It Is
53:51 Why Won't You Explain Your Real Reasoning?
56:16 Capacity, And Having Your Own Stuff Going On
59:25 Using A Phrase To Avoid Confrontation
59:52 Pop Culture Impact: The Top Four
1:01:47 #1 Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
1:02:19 The Appraisal
1:07:30 Dictionary Of Misinformation: Meeting Minutes
1:09:50 Shop, Credits, And Where To Find Us

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Reeve's Tale (c. 1386) · John Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530) · The Towneley Plays · Beaumont and Fletcher · Thomas Flatman, Belly God (1674) · Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742) · J.R.R. Tolkien, "Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale," Transactions of the Philological Society · Michael Quinion, World Wide Words · The Departed (2006) · To Have and Have Not (1944) · Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

COMMENT: Wet or whet — which are you, and are you prepared to defend it? And settle this for us: what does a thumbs-up actually mean?

ATP SHOP: every phrase gets a grade. Some of them get a mug.
appraisethephrase.com/shop
THE BRACKET: the board is filling up. Tournament comes March 2027.
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