Today I continue my tribute to the talented Michael Quinion.
From his wonderful website Word Wide Words (here’s the link: Welcome! ) comes this explanation of the odd phrase ‘there’s the rub.’
When we are discussing something that turns out to have a bad side to it (perhaps on outcome we don’t really want) we might grunt in disappoint: ‘Yes, there’s the rub.”
In fact, good old Shakespeare used it in exactly this way in Hamlet’s famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy.
When he speculates that death will be just like falling asleep, he says, ‘To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!’
So, it’s not new.
But old or new it is odd.
Here’s Michael’s explanation of where it comes from:
The origin is the ancient game of bowls (which Americans may know as lawn bowling; nothing to do with tenpin bowling). A rub is some fault in the surface of the green that stops a bowl or diverts it from its intended direction.
The term is recorded first a few years before Shakespeare’s time and is still in use. It appears, too, in golf, in the expression rub of the green, which refers to an accident that stops a ball in play — hitting an obstacle or a bystander perhaps — and for which no relief is allowed under the rules.
It later became a broader term for an abstract impediment or hindrance.
The Oxford English Dictionary has its first example from Thomas Nashe’s The First Part of Pasquil’s Apology of 1590: “Some small rubs, as I hear, have been cast in my way to hinder my coming forth, but they shall not profit.”
Rub of the green is also used figuratively, but in the sense of something that’s just bad luck and can’t be helped; an example is in James Elroy’s Clandestine: “I’m a deputy district attorney, for the city of Los Angeles. We have the same employer. I would rather be a deputy public defender, but that’s the rub of the green, as Dad would say.”’
There you are—absolutely first-class Wordie stuff!
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
The liveliest part of this website is usually the Q and A page -- be sure to check it out from time to time.
