Still wrapping my head around the fact the phrase “Hold Your Horses” is a play on the word Stable…
To be stable.
obsessed w how none of these are the real origin of the phrase
So what are the actual origins? Tell me. GIVE ME THE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE.
Hold your horses: it’s a very old phrase, found in Book 23 of the Odyssey, in regards to Antilochus’ wild performance at a chariot race. It’s simply a command to not rush into something without thinking, as holding your horses literally keeps them from bolting off.
Break a leg: appears to date to only the 1920s or 30s (earliest attestation in theatre comes from Edna Ferber’s 1939 autobiography A Peculiar Treasure), related to a theatre superstition about avoiding wishing a performer good luck. It might be derived from or parallel a German phrase, “Hals- und Beinbruch” (neck- and leg-fracture), a joking corruption of the Yiddish phrase “hatslokhe un brokhe” (success and blessing), but this isn’t supported by any direct textual evidence. Robert Wilson Lynd stated in a 1921 New Statesman essay that it was a kind of blessing in English horse racing, which really clarifies why it’s particularly the legs.
Be there or be square: a rhyming play on 1940s Jazz community slang. Square, here, originally meant fair and honest- a square deal- back to at least the 16th century, but eventually took on the sense of someone’s who’s a bit of a Melvin in the black community. A square also had a connotation of mainstream whiteness, probably reinforced by squareheads, a derogatory term for Germanic-Americans, and the square cut hair styles of white Americans who weren’t hip to the jazz scene.
listen, bc i am seeing this in non-robo circles now, you all have to understand the sheer confidence mangalho had here.
Rung is an original transformer character written by James Roberts aka the guy who replied with “what?”. He’s also been called his self-insert. so you know, imagine you tweeting abt wanting to snort someone’s pussy dust, and the creator of that character wants to know what the fuck is up with you.
and instead of going oops sorry! you stare back into his eyes and tell him to read
Well-reasoned extrapolation from established themes and wild speculation about incredibly stupid shit aren’t opposite dimensions of fandom, but necessary complements. You need to have a firm grasp of the creative reasoning behind a piece of media in order to cogently consider objectively daft questions like “if Bill S Preston and Theodore Logan were Time Lords, what would their titles be?”
Had no idea Dracula Daily was a thing and just assumed the collective tumblr hive mind decided English realtor Jonathan Harker was the little meow meow du jour for no reason at all
