The expression "Nailed it" seems perfect to me. It has visual and auditory expression - hammer going up and coming down with a nice bang and the nail going into wood perfectly.
What a vague description of its origins in Google and then repeated by all the websites. It wants the expression to be notable in the 1970s as a slang phrase.
The only origins credit is given to Horace for using a phrase that translates to 'nailed it'.
Phrasefinder says that it first appeared in Britain in writing the 15th century - in Olde English, so quite the quote. It doesn't actually seem to relate to our current interpretation and relates to hitting the nail on the head and not to nailing it. That's the closest I've come to finding out the origins. Here's the quote - see if you would have figured out half of the words. If you have, I am sure you've "nailed it."
“Yyf I here any mor thes materys rehersyd, I xal so smytyn ye nayl on ye hed that it schal schamyn alle hyr mayntenowrys.”
In modernised English, that reads as:
“If I hear any more these matters repeated, I shall so smite the nail on the head that it shall shame all her supporters.”
What a blast from the past - more than 50 years ago in Year 1 English at University when we had to study Chaucer. Looking up the words like a foreign language test. This was so that we could appreciate Chaucer as the father of English literature. Did we get a sense of understanding literary history, language development and the cultural context of early English writing? That's what we were supposed to have learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment