WHY DO WE SAY—?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 84, 10 April 1933, Page 6

WHY DO WE SAY—?

" DONT BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH."

This phrase is used very frequently nowadays and is generally preferred to such other expressions of similar meaning as "cut the cackle and come to the 'osses," or "come down to brass tacks." These two phrases, particularly the first, are usually considered more vulgar than that which asks a person not to "beat about the bush," and for this reason the latter saying has become recognised as being "King's English." Only one explanation has been suggested for tho derivation of this idiom, and that one is, as far as it is possible to assert, the correct one. There is really no cause for doubt that "to beat about the bush" was formerly "to beat the bush," a term used in several forms of hunting. We can also easily trace the development of ideas, as the phrase was slightly changed, and can sec how the present meaning came to the expression. In hunting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the words "to beat the bush" indicated the action which was taken to rouse the game. This verb would be applied either to the actual beating of a bush, which was calculated to drive out the quarry, or to the thorough searching of a stretch of land. The phrase soon found its way into the common language, and came to be applied to one person doing the "donkey-work," while another made the profits of his toils.

The interpretation of the expression later underwent a gresct change, for whereas formerly the person who "caught the bird" was accused of idling at the expense of the one who "beat the bush," the blame was now laid upon him who "beat the bush," now presumed to have been wasting his time, while another got on with the active work of "catching the bird." This change in meaning occurred, as a matter of fact, quite early, for the phrase is used in the later sense as long ago as the sixteenth century. There was still a slight change in meaning to be effected, and it was not long" before the idiomatic "to beat about the bush" acquired its present meaning. One of the earliest uses of the phrase with that'meaning is to be found in the "Cornish Comedy" of I6J>6: "He doth not beat about the bush, but falls immediately upon the point." Since then the phrase has come into such common use that it is impossible to pick out particular occasions where it has been used in famous writers' works. ,