December Column Winner

Every Tom, Dick and Harry

By David Christy, Enid News & Eagle

After watching “The Great Escape” — the story of allied prisoners of war in World War II — for the umpteenth time this week, my old fascination with colloquial expressions and sayings rattled my brain. 
Right off the bat in this column, I used the expression “umpteenth time” for the umpteenth time.
That’s right, it was one I learned from my mom in my early growing-up years of grade and high school. 
If I heard umpteenth time from her once, I heard it a thousand times. 
Funny the things we pick up from our parents and grandparents and other relatives when we don’t even realize it at the time. 
I’ve written more than a few columns on some of the expressions we use today. 
And I’m kind of talking more to the older generation of readers who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s here. 
We were bombarded by more than a few old sayings and expression. 
While watching “The Great Escape,” noted British actor Sir Richard Attenborough tells fellow officers planning the escape from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in the Nazi Germany province of Lower Silesia that they are going to name the three escape tunnels by the code words Tom, Dick and Harry. 
That’s the point in the movie the expression “every Tom, Dick and Harry” wrenched me from the continuing story and plot line. 
Where did that expression come from? Why did I hear my mom and dad and even my grandparents, use it? 
I kept asking myself, why do expressions like this take root in our language, in our occasional conversations with one another? 
I thought to myself, are these expressions triggered within our brains saying them as an afterthought — without really thinking — or are they so embedded in our brains over decades of hearing them because our subconscious likes them and uses them when the time is just right during a conversation?
Now the most-learned prefer the term idiom to describe the phrase, but I prefer colloquial idiom — a word or phrase that is not particularly literary, typically one used in ordinary conversation. 
Ok, that out of the way, the earliest known citation of “every Tom, Dick and Harry” comes to us from the 17th-century English theologian John Owen, who first used the phrase in 1657. 
It seems Owen told a governing body at Oxford University in England that “our critical situation and our common interests were discussed out of journals and newspapers by every Tom, Dick and Harry.” 
It seems, as I read about the saying, that the usage of men’s names like Tom, Dick and Harry were fairly common in England, and used by Shakespeare on occasion, to the point they were quite common in America’s mother country. 
So, using the expression “every Tom, Dick and Harry” came to us from across the seas, and stayed with us even today — although I sure don’t hear the expression as much now as I did growing up. 
The list of idioms from the English language are legion, and we most-times use them without even a second thought. A few expressions we blurt out include: pull someone’s leg (to joke); so far, so good (things are going well); speak of the devil (the person we were just talking about shows up); that’s the last straw (my patience has run out); no pain, no gain (you have to work for what you want); miss the boat (it’s too late); make a long story short (tell something briefly); it’s not rocket science (it’s not complicated); hit the sack (go to sleep); hang in there (don’t give up); go back to the drawing board (start over); give someone the benefit of the doubt (just believe what someone else says); get your act together (work better or leave); get something out of your system (do the thing you’ve been wanting to do so you can move on); get out of hand (get out of control); easy does it (slow down); cutting corners (doing something poorly in order to save time or money); and call it a day (stop working on something). 
And that, my friends, is just a portion of the idioms and expression we use on a regular basis. 
And we do it with virtually no thought to the process in that part of our brain that stores these expressions for future use. 
I know I’ve heard at least a few of the preceding expressions every week I’ve worked at this newspaper. I’m sure you have heard them too, and just processed them without having to think about what they say. 
So, I got my act together, got this out of my system and made a long story short. 
Well, sort of.