Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
"Hell in a handbasket" came from "Heaven in a handbasket"
The move from Midwest to East Coast
Dear Matthew: Where the heck did the phrase “going to hell in a handbasket” come from? It doesn’t make sense to us and has been bad for business. — Handbasket Makers of America, La Jolla
Dear Mr. M.A.: When we cooingly take unsuspecting Fifi or Fido off to the vet to get them “fixed, ” why do we call it getting them fixed, when actually we’re getting them broken? — David, San Diego
“Broken” only from the pet’s point of view, I guess. “Fixed” if you don’t want to be overrun by kittens and puppies. But nobody seems to care as much as you do about the origin. Solid info is hard to come by. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes D.H. Lawrence from 1930 to illustrate one of the earliest uses of “fix,” in your sense. “ ‘Is he a gentleman or a lady?’ ‘Neither, my dear, I had him fixed! It saves him from so many undesirable associations.’ ” An early 20th-century euphemism? Looks like it.
But we have some good news for you handbasket makers. The original place people were inclined to go in a handbasket was heaven. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, the expression “to go to heaven in a handbasket” was popular in the upper Midwest in the 19-teens, and it meant to have it made, to have your future secured, or something that is easy to do. (A handbasket is any small basket with an arched handle that, with its contents, can be carried easily in one hand.) Within a few decades, the expression spread to the East Coast and transformed itself into “going to hell in a handbasket,” hell apparently being a more common destination for the average New Yorker.
Here's something you might be interested in.
"Hell in a handbasket" came from "Heaven in a handbasket"
The move from Midwest to East Coast
"Hell in a handbasket" came from "Heaven in a handbasket"
The move from Midwest to East Coast
Dear Matthew: Where the heck did the phrase “going to hell in a handbasket” come from? It doesn’t make sense to us and has been bad for business. — Handbasket Makers of America, La Jolla
Dear Mr. M.A.: When we cooingly take unsuspecting Fifi or Fido off to the vet to get them “fixed, ” why do we call it getting them fixed, when actually we’re getting them broken? — David, San Diego
“Broken” only from the pet’s point of view, I guess. “Fixed” if you don’t want to be overrun by kittens and puppies. But nobody seems to care as much as you do about the origin. Solid info is hard to come by. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes D.H. Lawrence from 1930 to illustrate one of the earliest uses of “fix,” in your sense. “ ‘Is he a gentleman or a lady?’ ‘Neither, my dear, I had him fixed! It saves him from so many undesirable associations.’ ” An early 20th-century euphemism? Looks like it.
But we have some good news for you handbasket makers. The original place people were inclined to go in a handbasket was heaven. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, the expression “to go to heaven in a handbasket” was popular in the upper Midwest in the 19-teens, and it meant to have it made, to have your future secured, or something that is easy to do. (A handbasket is any small basket with an arched handle that, with its contents, can be carried easily in one hand.) Within a few decades, the expression spread to the East Coast and transformed itself into “going to hell in a handbasket,” hell apparently being a more common destination for the average New Yorker.
Comments