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Shauna: 00:00 Welcome to bunny trails, a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. I'm Shauna Harrison
Shauna: 00:00 Welcome to bunny trails, a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. I'm Shauna Harrison
Dan: 00:05 and
I'm Dan Pugh and we are live currently from podcon. I am a, I have to say, I
usually record in a room all by myself. So I am not used to looking at other
people while I am talking. Frankly, I don't normally even wear pants. So this
is uh, this is definitely different for me, but that has been really cool to be
able to do this in front of other podcasters and people who already know they
love podcasts. So that is very helpful. Shauna, are you enjoying podcon?
Shauna: 00:30 I
am. Podcon is amazing so far we've mostly attended workshops and we're learning
all kinds of things to help us make our show better and I'm really looking forward
to improving our presence online and getting a good flow going for the future.
Uh, so, but there are quite a few other podcasters here, both new and
established as well as fans and just generally awesome people. I only fan girl
a couple of times with my fellow nerdfighters and, and you know, cool babies,
but visiting Seattle in general has been really great. I love this weather. I
like drizzly, rainy, chilly days. Perfect.
Shauna: 01:11 Uh,
we got a chance to do some of those. Must've do a items in, in town, like the
space needle, pike place. Uh, we did a harbor cruise and went to the aquarium
and the science center. Yes. I even saw starbucks. Starbucks here in town. A
few I've heard. So if you want to see more checkout our patreon. We've got
pictures and other cool stuff from our adventures. It's
Patreon.com/bunnytrailspod.
Dan: 01:36 Well,
each week we delve into the origin and history of an idiom or another turn of
phrase and we discussed how it's been used over time. Now this often takes us
down some fun, interesting research rabbit holes. So this week we're going to
look at a freeze by the skin of your teeth. So the Oxford English dictionary
defines skin of your teeth as an idiom, meaning a very narrow margin or barely
or only just and the common law is this phrase originated with job of biblical
fame. And I hate saying this definitely isn't true because it kind of depends
on how you want to attribute translations. The book of Job was written in
Hebrew and this is of course an English phrase. So even if Job had directly
dictated, this isn't necessarily his phrase that he intended it to mean or used
in the same way that he would have intended it.
Shauna: 02:25 Gotcha.
So Job maybe told the story or the story is about Job, but it wasn't a direct
quote, necessarily.
Dan: 02:32 I
couldn't find anything in the AP style guide on how you're supposed to. A
tribute in a test to people in translation. So we're just going to have to
delve a little bit further into it. So this ordinate originates in 15, 60 with
the Geneva Bible. This is one of the first English translations of the Bible,
specifically job Chapter Nineteen, verse 20. And it says, I have escaped with
the skin of my teeth. Now let me tell you first trying to research earlier
language versions of the Bible was difficult because the character's name is
job, which is spelled j o b, which in English is spelled just like the word
job. So Google's is going. Yeah, exactly. Google kept telling me that jobs were
available for a biblical translation lists, which is apparently a very
lucrative business. So if you're looking for a new career path, I guess that's
an option for you.
Dan: 03:23 So
the Geneva version of the Bible wasn't the first English translation. Wycliffs
gets that honor. And of note, wycliffs translated the phrase differently, more
like only my lips were left around my teeth. That sounds gross. And the Oxford
English dictionary even points out that they're not entirely sure the
translation is accurate and there's a lot of debate over it. So Job may not
have even meant for this to be a narrow escape in the context of what he was
talking about. However, the Geneva Bible though, is still hugely significant
because it was the first mechanically printed mass produced Bible that was made
directly available to the general public.
Shauna: 04:03 That's
actually, I think that's pretty cool. That's a significant feat. That alone may
add that mass production and being make it, making it accessible like that,
Dan: 04:13 especially
once we talk about Queen Mary who was very much not a fan of that kind of a
thing, but we'll get to that in just a minute. So the Geneva Bible also had a
variety of study guides and aids and including verse citations that allow the
reader to cross reference one verse with numerous relevant versus in the rest
of the Bible and also in included introductions to each book of the Bible, then
acted to summarize all of the material the book would cover, which is something
you see in bibles that are printed in English and other languages today. Right?
So quick oversimplified version of the book of job. Job was said to be a great
man who had the utmost faith in God. Satan claimed that job only followed God
because God protected job. So God gave Satan permission to test job's faith, so
long as Satan didn't kill him, and Satan does takes away job's home wealth and
even killed his family and job goes through this variety of emotions and coping
mechanisms and in what was mes and such, probably a warranted, but still
remains faithful to his god.
Dan: 05:12 And
at the end God gives job back all he lost. And then some, I think as much as
that could be possible. So I don't know that this sounds like a good deal. This
sounds awful. This is horrible. If if you're a protector of a person and you
let that person get fired, robbed, and your wife and kids all murdered, just to
prove that this person will still like you when they're done. That's, that's
horrible. It doesn't, doesn't sound awesome. I don't need that kind of
protector in my life. But anyway. So by the same token, if that protector is
supposed to be an omnipotent, been, well then I think what that makes me think
of is there's an episode of Star Trek the next generation called survivors. And
the enterprise follows a distress signal and finds a world to be completely
destroyed, save an older couple. It turns out the old man is not human as he
appears, but as an immortal energy been with biblically awesome powers. His
species are pacifists. But when the woman, he loves is killed fighting an
invasion force, he retaliates by not only killing the attackers, but also
destroying their entire race, about 50 billion souls
Dan: 06:13 Yeah.
And to do it at the snap of the fingers. I mean, it's like we're talking
infinity war kind of stuff. Thanos stuff here.
Dan: 06:22 Sorry.
Listen. The next one's about to come out. I don't know how you've avoided
things this far. Anyway, at the end of it, Picard basically in all of his
wisdom says that they're just not qualified to judge this bean because they
don't even have laws to fit the magnitude of the crime. And I kind of feel that
way about the god of the Old Testament. Some of the things that are attributed
to the Old Testament, like the great flood Sodom and Gomorrah. And even to a
lesser extent, this thing with job seems to me, um, something that I, I don't
even, I don't know, I don't, I don't have, don't have the words to be able to
judge someone for that, but it seems for them,
Shauna: 06:57 well,
when you're talking about something of that magnitude, like how do you, how do
you correlate any kind of rules are established rules for a power that you
don't possess and can understand. So I think they encountered that a lot in
the, you know, in those superhero universes where you're, you're trying to
establish rules for, for something that is beyond what you're capable of
understanding.
Dan: 07:18 Yeah,
absolutely. But anyway, back to job. So crediting this quote to him wouldn't be
correct as the book of job of course was translated and we're not entirely sure
that that's what it meant. So who maybe is more responsible for this? Well, the
Old Testament translation of the Geneva Bible was overseen by Anthony Gilby.
Gilby was a protestant from England who fled to Geneva, Switzerland during the
1550s during a time known as the Marian exile. This was when the queen of Queen
Mary of England took a very hard stance against Protestants at the time and
occasionally burned to death scholars who tried to translate the Bible into a
common language.
Shauna: 08:06 Yeah,
and then I. Man, that's a lot of people just getting killed for crazy reasons.
Yeah.
Dan: 08:12 Well,
of course Gilby wasn't the only one who worked on this. There are other
scholars who worked on that translation as well, including William Willingham,
who supervised the New Testament version. He gets most of the credit because
the new testament version came out in 1557 and the old testament came out in
1560, but so William Willingham oversaw the new testament side and Anthony
Gilby oversaw the old testament side. There were others is myles coverdale,
Christopher Goodman and Thomas Samson, along with William Coal, also worked on
the old testament translations, so it's likely the one of these folks actually
originated this phrase based on their interpretation of what job was said to
have said. Now, as I alluded to before, there is some disagreement over whether
or not the translation is accurate with this specific phrase, but it doesn't
really change the fact that it is the translation on paper since the 15, well
since 1560, and it is the actual first attestation of our phrase. So accuracy
of this translation, not withstanding, we can, unlike most idioms, we can clearly
state that the first time we think this was used was in the 15,60 version of
the Geneva Bible.
Shauna: 09:22 That's,
I think, one. It's really neat to be able to pinpoint a date because it's so
difficult in language to find a specific date of when something was first used,
whether that's in literature or in speech or any of that. Uh, but, uh, also I
love the fact that basically somebody was translating the story of job and
found a one part of it and just like through their own little analogy in there
and it turned into something that still is being used,
Dan: 09:51 Right?
Well, it is hard not to read the book of Job and not come away with the same
interpretation that he did escape, barely by the skin of his teeth, at least
the way we use the phrase today. So this translator is basically creating a new
idiom for this purpose. So as with most of our idioms though, if you do a quick
google search online, you will find the wrong place that this is said to
originate. So most of the articles and things that you look at for skin of your
teeth, say it originated with the King James version of the Bible. But we know
this is untrue and we can categorically debunk this because the King James
version of the Bible came out in 1611 and the Geneva Bible came out in 1560. So
there is a full 50 year difference between where most of the Internet thinks
this phrase came from and where we see it a tested for the first time.
Dan: 10:42 right?
Absolutely. And so of course 1560, we saw that. And then in 1647, there's
another example where the earl of Clarendon uses this in his songs and tracks
that he wrote. And he says he reckoned himself only escaped with the skin of
his teeth, that he had nothing left
Dan: 11:04 right,
right. It's contemplations on the Psalm. So yes. Yes. He, well he wrote, he
wrote the contemplations he did not write the psalm. All right. So in the mid
16 hundreds we still see this phrase being used exactly as the way it was
originally and the way we use it today. And we're going to see a pattern there.
So in 17,74, Ethan Allen of, the American revolutionary fame also gave a brief
narrative proclamation in the city of New York. And he said they left their
possessions and farms, so the conquerors and escaped with the skin of their
teeth. Nice. Yeah. In 1816, J. Martin wrote in a, in a narrative mission
through Nova Scotia, he said, having an escape by the skin of my teeth, I may
be allowed to look back upon the dangers I have passed, as with the voice of
Salvatore warning to point them out to others.
Shauna: 11:52 Nice.
Like, listen, don't, don't learn yourself. Learn from my mistakes. That's what,
that's what he's saying there.
Dan: 11:58 Absolutely.
And even in the 1940s, we still see this. So jrr tolkien got into this. He
wrote a letter in March 1941 and said, I ought to have got a good scholarship.
I only landed by the skin of my teeth and exhibition of 60 pounds at Exeter.
Dan: 12:14 So
we even see this all the way through from 1560 through the 1940s. We still see
this phrase used in exactly the same way in. And I love the fact that it hasn't
changed, really hasn't changed in over 450 years because it's still used
frequently today and we'll talk about that right after the break, but it is
very interesting to see just this phrase sticks to it. That hasn't changed at
all. And that's very, very odd for an idiom of over 450 years old.
Shauna: 12:42 Yeah,
that's awesome. Well, today's show is sponsored by our patrons on Patreon. We
want to say a special thanks to our log them or theology interns, Charlie Moore
and Pat Rowe for sponsoring this episode. Patreon.com is a subscription service
that allows you to support content creators you love. It's free to sign up and
follow along if you are in a financial situation that allows for monetary
support, you can get additional perks for as little as $1 a month. Features
like early access to episodes of behind the scenes content bonus episodes and
more are all available at Patreon.com/bunnytrailspod.
Dan: 13:24 Looking
at Google trends, we see this phrase or some variant like it, skin of my teeth,
skin of your teeth, skin of his teeth, skin of their teeth as all having the
typical ups and downs of most phrases since they started tracking it in 2004.
It is interesting though, the dispersal on the trends show that this phrase is
primarily used on the coasts, the east or the west coast, mostly the east coast
pretty heavily as well, but far less in the midwest and in the northern parts
of the states. I found that to be an interesting trend and I've been. This is
my, this is the furthest West I've ever traveled and I don't know that I've
ever heard anybody say it here, but I definitely have heard it used in casual
conversation on the east coast and in Texas where I'm originally from, but the
more I think about it, I don't know that I've heard it a lot in Kansas where we
live now.
Shauna: 14:12 Yeah,
I've heard it a couple of times in my over my life, but not, you know, on a
regular. So I think. I think that's probably pretty true for the Midwest, at
least on a regular, on a regular,
Dan: 14:23 On
a regular? Are we creating a new, a new phrase ourselves here? On a regular is
fine. That's just how we're going to do it.
Dan: 14:28 So
a couple of examples. We see this in pop culture and in works of arts. The skin
of our teeth was a play by Thornton wilder, which won the Pulitzer Prize for
drama. It opened in 1942 and it has three acts that don't form a continuous
narrative, but they all tie biblical stories into modern concepts
Dan: 14:53 Another
interesting point is there was an Australian film have the same name based off
of this play that won some awards in Australia in 1959 as well. Then there's
also, if anybody is a fan of the group megadeath, there's skin of my teeth.
That is a song that is more your style of music. So it's often 1992 album
countdown to extinction. And the word say no. Escaping pain. You belong to me
clinging onto life by the skin of my teeth.
Dan: 15:44 So
by the skin of his teeth is also a book by Anne Walsh came out in 2004. And
this is the third book in the Barkerville mystery trilogy, which follows the
mystery. Oh yeah. So of course it's a trilogy. So it follows the strange
events. Have a 17 year old living in 18 sixties. British Columbia now. What I'm
not sure of since I haven't read them. Was he 17 in all three of the books?
Does he just not age? Uh, or was he 17 in the first book and then 19 in the. Or
maybe it pulls a Harry Potter and it's like each year as a probably a year or
something. Possibly. I don't know. It did seem pretty interesting. Some of the
concepts that they dealt with in those, those books. So might be something that
I add to my to be read list
Dan: 16:33 Well
it's not quite what you think. So this book by Jason Nodo and Doug Cunningham
came out in 2017 and it is a visual history of morning breath incorporated, the
Brooklyn based Boutique Design Studio who's collaborators included renowned
musical artists from Jay z to the foo fighters as well as such top brands as
vans and Adidas. That's interesting. I had no idea that, that also, where did
they get the name for their company? I do not know. We need a name and they
look at each other and one of them you have morning breath and they're like,
oh, that's it. That's it. Nailed it. Totally. That's probably, you know, I bet.
I bet a bet that they probably talk about this in the book probably might be
something to check out. So one of my favorite things about this phrase here is
that it's a great reminder that sometimes the origin of an idiom is just an
accident. So with the skin of your teeth, there was simply a guy who translated
the text into another language and boom, an idiom is born and for 450 years the
idiom has been used in pretty much the same way by English speakers all across the
world. And I think that's a, that's a super awesome thing to think about. So
how great is it that one can simply put something on paper and have it turned
into something that people say for 20 generations and counting?
Shauna: 17:48 Yeah,
I think this is the first phrase that we've had that's really done that the
entire time. A lot of them will circle back around to the same meaning or will
find that they kind of transitioned into what, how we use them today. But this
one, the fact that it means the same thing, um, as its origin. You know, is
really cool.
Dan: 18:05 Yeah.
It's definitely not what we normally find. Also, the other thing about this is
we can pinpoint the moment I entered the lexicon, which fortunately since it
was in an English translation of the Bible and future translations of the Bible
continued to use that same translation, it, it definitely gained in popularity
so we know exactly where, how it became popular, where it first started and it
hasn't changed meaning at all, and that is probably the first time we've ever
seen that with a turn of phrase. So for current and aspiring or current or
aspiring writers, remember that. Keep dreaming, keep writing, start writing if
you haven't started writing because someday those words you wrote will be
talked about by your great. Great, great, great. There were 20 of them. One
great.
Dan: 18:53 emperor's
new groove? That's the one with the little kids. She's like a jump roping.
Great. Great. Great. Great. Great goes on forever. Yzma was definitely old.
Great. Great. Great Grandma. Great. Great. All right, well that about wraps us
up for today. Thanks for joining us here at pod con and a huge thanks to Ben
Ratner in the fine folks at LiveU for helping us make this episode. We greatly
appreciate letting us have the space here. I'd also like to say a big thank you
to those who posted reviews for the show. Leave a review really is the easiest
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even facebook all @bunnytrailspod.
Shauna: 19:38 If
you have a suggestion for an idiom or other turn of phrase, catch us on social
media or head over to Patreon and let us know. We post most of our additional
content on Patreon and you can follow along there for free. Of course, if you
want to support the show through monetary means, we're okay with that too.
Either way, head over to Patreon.com/bunny trails pod for all the latest
content. So thanks again for joining us and we'll talk to you again next week.
Until then, remember, words belong to their users.
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