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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..... Blaze a trail
To lead the way.
When soldiers ‘blaze away’ with their weapons the
blaze refers to the fire and smoke. This has been used
since the late 18th century, as here from the Battle of
Brooklyn, 1776:
“We bid them stand and blazed away like brave boys.”
The meaning we now give to ‘blaze a trail’ - of someone
forging ahead and clearing a path for others, would
tend to lead towards imagining blaze to mean burn, in
the same way. Another allusion might be to someone
charging ahead with such vigour that they leave a
smoldering trail in their wake.
Those aren’t the thoughts in the mind of those that
coined this phrase though. A blaze is a notch or mark,
like the blaze marks seen on horses’ faces. So, ‘to blaze a
trail’ was to mark it out by notching trees so that others
could follow. Trees are also often marked this way to
single them out for felling.
The use of blaze to mean the chipping off of a small
piece of bark to mark a path or boundary is American
in origin. That’s seen in these early citations.
Dr. Thomas Walker’s Journal of Exploration [of
Kentucky], 1750:
“I Blazed a way from our House to the River.” & “I
blazed several trees in the fork and marked T. W. on a
Sycamore Tree”
John J. Henry’s An accurate account of the hardships of
that band of heroes who traversed the wilderness in the
campaign against Quebec in 1775:
“A path tolerably distinct, which we made more so by
blazing the trees.”
The first actual usage of the precise phrase ‘blaze a trail’
that can be found is from the Montana newspaper The
Helena Independent, November 1883:
“The merchants thereupon, desirous of securing the
trade of the new mines, offered the stranger $100 if he
would blaze a trail through, and afterward it could be
cleared sufficiently for pack animals to pass along.”
Blast from the past
Something or someone that returns after a period of
obscurity or absence. It is normally applied to things
that that were thought fondly of previously and are
making a welcome return - particularly pop songs.
Used first by US radio DJs when introducing old records.
It isn’t clear which DJ coined this, and no one lays
especial claim to it. A strong contender has to be Jerry
Blavat (‘The Geator with the Heater’). Blavat’s style was
frantic and he was known for his impromptu ‘stream of
consciousness’ verbal delivery. Here’s an example from
an article about him in ‘The Progress’, a Pennsylvania
newspaper, from 1967:
“Kings and queens, yon [sic] royal teens, this is your
Geator with the Heater coming to you on Big-Tahm
Tuesday where we rock the big tick- tock, where we got
the class to beat the blast from the past”
The article began with a dictionary of ‘handy translations,
straight from The Geator’, including:
Groove, blast - great
Golden Oldies - old rock ‘n roll songs
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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