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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... Grind to a halt
Lose momentum and stop.
The punishment for watching daytime TV is that the BBC
often broadcasts ‘infotainment’ type history shows that,
as incidental asides from the main theme, explain the
origin of some phrase or another. These usually turn out
to be as reliable as those from the average tour guide,
that is, almost inevitably made-up stories that serve
someone’s purpose. A 2009 example, The Victorian
Farm, included an interview with a miller who explained
that, when the wind drops, the windmill’s grindstones
slow down and eventually stop turning - “hence the
expression, grind to a halt”. That seemed plausible and
worth checking, although any enthusiasm was blunted
rather by hearing that the miller could tell how well
the flour was ground by rubbing it between finger and
thumb - “hence the expression, rule of thumb” - which
is incorrect. Anyway, here is the research...
Frustratingly, the origins of ‘grind to a halt’, or ‘ground
to a halt’, are unclear. What is known is that the phrases
aren’t, as they might sound, mediaeval, but are of quite
recent coinage. The earliest examples found of either
term in print is from The Nevada State Journal, December
1934, in an article titled ‘Gridiron Season Grinds to Close
In America Today’:
Football will grind to a halt tomorrow in scattered
sections of the country.
The lateness of the emergence of the phrase in print
does tend to rule out windmilling as the source - the
heyday of such being long past by the 1930s. In the
journalist’s choice of language there seems to have been
an association of ‘gridiron’ and ‘grind’. This is paralleled
by a similar link between ‘grind to a halt’ and ‘gridlock’.
As to an actual origin, it is unlikely that one will be found.
‘Grind to a halt’ is probably just a colloquial phrase that
refers to something slowing down and stopping - what
that thing was when the first person used the expression
isn’t really important, and is almost certainly lost to us.
The chances are, though, that it wasn’t a windmill.
Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
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