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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..... Keep the ball rolling
Maintain a level of activity in and enthusiasm for a
project.
The American expression ‘keep the ball rolling’ was
preceded by the similar, now archaic, British phrase
‘keep the ball up’. They had much the same meaning,
the earlier one alludes to keeping a ball in the air, that is,
conveying the notion of keeping an activity going. This
was used figuratively by the radical social philosopher
Jeremy Bentham, in a letter to George Wilson in 1781,
referring to his efforts to keep a conversation going:
“I put a word in now and then to keep the ball up.”
Bentham may be long dead but continues to be radical.
He didn’t opt for the traditional coffin, buried six feet
under, but willed that his body be stuffed, mounted and
put on display. It is exhibited in a cabinet at University
College, London (see right, although the severed head
has now been removed). Many students at the University
in the 1960s took the opportunity to open the cabinet
doors to see Bentham peering back through the waxy
glass - quite disconcerting.
The ‘keep the ball rolling’ version of the phrase owes its
origin and popularity to the US presidential election of
July 1840. That election is widely regarded as introducing
all the paraphernalia of present-day elections, that is,
campaign songs, advertising slogans and publicity stunts
of all kinds. The unpopular incumbent President Martin
Van Buren was pitted against Whig candidates, General
William Harrison, a war hero who had fought against
the Shawnee Indians at Tippecanoe, and John Tyler. The
Whig candidates revelled in a folksy ‘cider-drinking, logcabin, men of the people’ image and adopted the first
known political slogan - ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler, too’. A
song of the same name was considered to have sung
Harrison into the presidency:
Don’t you hear from every quarter, quarter, quarter,
Good news and true,
That swift the ball is rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.
Harrison’s campaign literature referred to Victory Balls.
These weren’t, as we might expect, dance parties that
celebrated his famous victory, but ten-foot diameter
globes made of tin and leather, which were pushed from
one campaign rally to the next. His supporters were
invited to attend rallies and push the ball on to the next
town, chanting ‘keep the ball rolling’.
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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