According to John M. Robinson, the Chief Diversity Officer of the State Department, there are several common phrases that we use everyday that can be highly offensive. In an attempt to educate all of the employees of the State Department, he wrote an article for State Magazine, the official magazine for the state department. In the article Mr. Robinson lists four common phrases that contain racist or otherwise offensive meanings: "hold down the fort", "going dutch", "rule of thumb" and "handicap". But what are the backgrounds behind these words, are they really that offensive?
The first phrase on the list, "hold down the fort", is offensive to Native Americans due to the host of awful military actions that have been taken against them in the past, at least according to Mr. Robinson. However, I searched around for any info I could find for the origin of the phrase, but found very little, none of which directly pointed to the phrase being used specifically about or toward Native Americans. The original phrase, at least some people believe, seems to be erroneously attributed to Gen. Sherman during the Civil War. In 1864 Sherman signaled a Union fort that was under siege with the following message, "Sherman is coming. Hold out" and "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming." This got turned round in the Northern papers and took the from of "hold the fort". The phrase was further publicized when it was used in a popular hymn written by Philip Paul Bliss. While "hold down the fort" may have been used during the attacks on Native Americans, it doesn't seem that the phrase originated because of them.
The next phrase mentioned in the article is, "going Dutch". The phrase, "going Dutch" goes back to the 17th century when England and the Netherlands were racing each other to build their empires. As a way to make fun of the Dutch, many English people began to use Dutch as a derogatory descriptor in such phrases such as "Dutch courage" (liquor), "Dutch defense" (a retreat), "Dutch nightingale" (a frog) and "going Dutch". Since that time, the only one that seems to have stuck around and entered the mainstream is "going Dutch". That phrase could stem from a couple of sources. The first and least offensive, could be a reference to old style farm house doors that split in two, with one top piece and one bottom piece. That type of door is called a Dutch door, and the thinking is that since those doors are equally split in two, some one used that as the basis of the phrase as an illustration on how they wanted to split the bill. Another, less nice theory was that the Dutch were known to be stingy, and so if you "went Dutch" you only paid for your own expenses. Similar phrases are found round the world, with a common variation being "going American" or "American style" instead of "going Dutch". Once could make the case that since, "going Dutch" does have an offensive origin, it shouldn't be used today. The case could also be made that over time, the offensiveness of the phrase has been lost and it no longer is meant to directly defame the character of the Dutch.
The next phrase on the list is "rule of thumb". Mr. Robinson asserts that this phrase comes from an old rule where a man could beat his wife with a stick no larger in width than his thumb. However, he is incorrect. The earliest known example of the phrase is found in
Heaven upon Earth, a book written by J. Durham in 1685. In the book, "rule of thumb" is used as a unit of measure, which is consistent with other examples of the phrase found in other languages. Some believe that the phrase came from carpenters or farmers using their thumbs as measuring devices to tell how long something was or how deep to plant something.
As for the potentially offensive history of "rule of thumb", the earliest known belief in it being used as a rule for how much damage you could inflict on your wife comes from 1782, when James Gillray drew a cartoon of British judge Sir Francis Buller handing out sticks for husbands to use. No one knows for certain if he ever actually made such a pronouncement, due to the poor record keeping of transcripts at the time. If Buller did say such a thing, he would more than likely stood alone in his opinion. As less than 100 years after the supposed pronouncement, Edward Foss wrote in his
Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England that Buller, "is attributed the obnoxious and ungentlemanly dictum that a husband may beat his wife, so that the stick with which he administers the castigation is not thicker than his thumb". However, even back then, Foss could not find any evidence that Buller had actually said it, and there are numerous examples before and after this statement of laws and decisions protecting women from such abuse
The modern belief in the offensive history of "rule of thumb", can be traced to 1976, when feminist Del Martin used the phrase as a metaphorical reference. Many misunderstood what she was trying to say, and the belief in "rule of thumb" referring to abuse reared its head again. It even became so widespread that when congress issued a report in 1982 on wife abuse, it was titled, "Under the Rule of Thumb".
The last phrase Mr. Robinson mentions is "handicap". In the article, even he mentions that he is not 100 percent where this comes from, but the origin he sites is incorrect. The initial origin of "handicap" comes from a method of bartering where two people would offer up items for trade and would place in a small amount of money in a cap that an appraiser would hold. The two parties that were bartering would offer their items and the appraiser, and he would value them. Upon the valuation, both parties would stick their hands in the cap, and the pull them out with either a closed or open hand. An open hand meant the trade was agreed on, but a closed had signified no deal. If both parties made the same decision, either to trade or reject the deal, the appraiser would keep the money that was in the cap. However if one person accepted the trade, but the other rejected it, then the one who accepted the trade would take the money in the cap. This method, originally called hand-in-cap, was later shortened to handicap, and was designed to try and make the bartering process fair to both parties.
Later the phrase began to be applied to races and other sporting events where some one was either given an advantage, a golf handicap for example, or a disadvantage to level out the playing field. One such example of the latter idea is found in horse races where more weight would be added to a faster horse to slow it down so that it's speed was more in line with the other horses. These types of races became called handicap races. Around the same time, the phrase "handicap" started being used to refer to disadvantages a person might face. It wasn't until 1915 that "handicap" began to be used to describe an impairment of some kind. However this was only used to describe children who were physically disabled. It wasn't until the 1950's that the phrase was extended to include adults and the mentally disabled. Given the above, the word "handicap" has a much less offensive origin than the one Mr. Robinson applies to it.
As you can see, word origins can be a tricky thing to uncover.However, I hope this clears the air some on where these phrases come from. While I do agree with Mr. Robinson's idea that we need to be careful in what we write or say, we also need to know the truth on where the phrases come from before we decide if we can use them or not.
Sources:
1.
http://digitaledition.state.gov/publication/?i=119665
2.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/new-frontiers-in-hypersensitvity-state-department-officer-says-holding-down-the-fort-is-racist/
3.
http://juicyecumenism.com/2012/09/01/hold-the-fort-or-not/
4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Dutch
5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
6.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rul1.htm
7.
http://www.word-detective.com/back-l2.html
8.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-it-mean-when-you-go-dutch.htm
9.
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/HandicapDefinition.htm
10.
http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/handicap.asp
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