Friday, April 10, 2009
Unanswered
There are many things in the universe that are unanswered. Or rather, just undiscovered. One such mystery that has left me boggled for years and has troubled my soul (not really that much), is the idiom, 'a stone's throw'. Just how far is a stone's throw? The only information I have found tells me a stone's throw is a very short distance. This is not a satisfying answer for me. I can throw pretty far, but probably not as far as a major league ball player. I'm positive I can throw further than a 5 year old and and maybe most girls. I know that when I throw a baseball to someone, they are still in ear shot of me. Which leads me to think that maybe there ISN'T an actual set distance because my hearing isn't as acute as some. So how far is an ear shot? Ugh, drink!
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This idiom was really hard to find the meaning of!
ReplyDeleteHere is what I found:
Meaning
A short distance.
Origin
A stone's throw is, of course, literally the distance that a stone can be thrown. It has come to mean any short but undefined distance.
The phrase seems to have been in use by the end of the 16th century. Arthur Hall's translation The Ten books of Homers Iliades, 1581, contains this line:
"For who can see a stones throw of ought thing in land or plaine?"
Stones hadn't then been established as the definitive objects to be thrown though and the following year Nicholas Lichefield wrote:
"The enimyes were come, within the throwe of a Dart."
All forms of the phrase were little used and it wasn't until 1704 that Jonathan Swift revived it in The battle of the books:
"The two Cavaliers had now approach'd within a Throw of a Lance."
The 'stone's throw' variant was established properly by John Arbuthnot in The History of John Bull, 1712, and, following that, there are many citations of the phrase:
"Mrs. Bull's condition was looked upon as desperate by all the men of art; but there were those that bragged they had an infallible ointment and plaister, which being applied to the sore, would cure it in a few days; at the same time they would give her a pill that would purge off all her bad humours, sweeten her blood, and rectify her disturbed imagination. In spite of all applications the patient grew worse every day; she stunk so, nobody durst come within a stone's throw of her, except those quacks who attended her close, and apprehended no danger."