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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
To borrow a homely expression, it was determined in
This week it is..... Take the gilt off the gingerbread
taking the gilt off the gingerbread.
Remove an item’s most attractive qualities.
This phrase has nothing to do with being guilty of The ‘homely expression’ reference indicates that the
anything of course - ‘take the guilt off the gingerbread’ phrase was already known, in the Antipodes at least,
is just a misspelling. The word is ‘gilt’, which refers to by 1854.
a thin layer of gold. Gingerbread is a form of cake and, It has been suggested that ‘take the gilt off the gingerbread’
although the association of the two words seems a little derives from the ornately carved decoration on ships and
odd, gingerbread cakes were in fact gilded for festivals buildings. This decoration was known as gingerbreadwork and was referred to in print by Tobias Smollett in
and other special events in the Middle Ages.
The word gingerbread has been recorded in English The adventures of Roderick Random, 1748:
since the 13th century; it was originally a form of simple Lookee, - if you come athwart me, ‘ware your
cake flavoured with treacle and, not surprisingly, ginger. gingerbreadwork. - I’ll be foul of your quarter, d--n me.
It was, and is, frequently made as a form of biscuit, by Gingerbread cakes had been decorated with gold for
rolling out the dough and cutting it into shapes - men, centuries before the naming of gingerbread-work and it
is clear that the gilded decoration was named after the
animals, letters of the alphabet etc.
Gold can be hammered to a minute thickness to form cake rather than the other way around. ‘Take the gilt off
gold leaf. This can be ‘gilded’ to many different surfaces, the gingerbread’ wasn’t coined until after both meanings
including cake, and is harmless when eaten in small were known, so it could be derived from either. None of
the early uses of the phrase relate to ships. It seems more
quantities - hence its use as a culinary decoration.
The expression ‘taking the gilt off the gingerbread’ isn’t likely that the phrase derives from the ‘cake’ context.
found in print until the 19th century, but the practise Sadly, gingerbread men (now often politically corrected
of gilding gingerbread cakes was probably in place to ‘people’) have had the gilt taken off them and are now
well before that, as ‘gingerbread’ has been used as usually clad with icing sugar.
an adjective meaning ‘showy and insubstantial’ since
the 17th century. Gingerbread without its casing of
gold leaf was a rather humble offering - often little Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
more than flavoured stale bread, and not likely to like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
attract a reputation for showiness. Using present-day
parlance, ungilded gingerbread was more minging than
blinging. An early reference to that disparaging usage
of gingerbread is found in The History of the tryall of
Cheualry, 1605:
Anticke! thou lyest, and thou wert a Knight of gingerbread: I am no Anticke.
The first evidence that found in print of ‘take the gilt off
the gingerbread’ is from The New Zealand newspaper
The Lyttleton Times, February 1854:
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