I like to discover the origins of words and phrases and see how our usage of them changes over time. For instance, geographically, and etymologically, straits don’t have to be straight but they do have to be narrow. A strait is a narrow passage of water connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The word derives from Middle English through shortening of the Old French estreit ‘tight, narrow’, from the Latin strictus, past participle of stringere, ‘tighten, draw tight’. The words constrict, restrict, and stricture have the same root.

To be in dire straits is to be severely restricted, especially financially, or in capacity for action. This sense applies in straitjacket, strait-laced and straitened circumstances. To be on the straight and narrow, on the other hand, is to be trying to live in an honest and morally upright way. Reformed criminals ‘go straight’. It derives from the way of salvation in the Bible, for example, Matthew 7:13–14 (NIV):

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

However, Gary Martin points out on his wonderful phrase finder site¹, that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, first published in 1611, renders this same passage as:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
[italics added]

The KJV clearly opts for ‘strait’ rather than ‘straight’, though our modern usage prefers ‘straight’, certainly in straight and narrow. After all, it means ‘direct and reliable’, as in the phrase as straight as a die, and evokes a direct and unwavering route to salvation. Straight and narrow traces to A Journal of George Fox, Volume 1, from 1694.

The quick and the dead is another phrase that used to puzzle me. Today many people use it to mean being fast or slow to do something, the modern sense of quick. But it also comes from the KJV. In 17th century English, quick meant ‘alive’, and to quicken meant to ‘give life to’. So for example:

Acts 10:42 – ‘And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.’

Romans 8:11 – ‘But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.’

1 Peter 4:5 – ‘Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.’
[italics added]

The quick and the dead are just the living and the dead.

The phrase as dead as a doornail, Gary says² , was in common use by Shakespeare’s time and predates the KJV. It appeared in William Langland’s Middle English narrative poem, The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman, circa 1370–90:

Fey withouten fait is febelore þen nouȝt, And ded as a dore-nayl.
[Faith without works is feebler than nothing, and dead as a doornail.]

The poem is an allegory of the quest for the true Christian life³, so as dead as a doornail comes from a colourful paraphrase of James 2:20 (KJV): ‘But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?’

In the 14th century, doornails⁴ were thick and had large heads. They were hammered though the timbers and the ends bent over to secure them, a process similar to riveting that was called ‘clenching’. This may be the source of the ‘deadness’, as such a nail would be unusable afterwards.

The Bible has given us many other phrases still in use today. A fly in the ointment comes from Ecclesiastes 10:1 and A drop in the bucket from Isaiah 40:15.

If you know of some others, I’d love to hear them.

Notes