Transcripts

Christine Ammer:
That's from physics, actually from aeronautics, pushing to fly an aircraft higher or faster or dive more steeply than it's ever been attempted to see what it could do.

Christine Ammer, author of, The Facts On File Dictionary Of Cliches…

By about the 1980's it was beginning to be used figuratively and so widely it's become a cliché.

The cliché, "to steal someone's thunder", means to ruin the effect of something by doing it or saying it first.

It originated in the 18th Century theatre when a critic and a playwright made a kind of thunder machine for his play - it consisted of raveling a sheet of tin backstage. The play failed, but a few nights later he went to review a production of Macbeth, and low and behold the same effect was used. Which prompted the critic, whose name was John Dennis, to say, "They steal my thunder."

You know the cliché, "Fly by the seat of your pants"…

That comes from WWII when the instruments used by aviators during the war were not always working that well; they really flew by guesswork sometimes. And now there's another called "Wing it" which you think might come from the Air Force or from flying but it doesn't. It comes from the theatre where an understudy would stand in the wings ready to replace the actor, so he'd be studying his part in the wings. And sometimes the replacement didn't quite know the part awfully well, so he'd have to "wing it".

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.