"old China hand"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Certainly "hand" as the noun form of "handy" = "proficient" is very
conventional English? Maybe it's a little old-fashioned? Several of my
older relatives, Americans born ca. 1900, used to use expressions such as
"quite a hand at auto repairs" = "quite an auto-repair expert" or so. I
don't think I hear this much today.


I guess that I've always assumed -- without giving it much thought -- that
"old China hand" was some sort of calque from Chinese. I guess "haoshou" [=
"good"+"hand"] = "expert" or so for example is a good parallel to the
English usage?


On [further] thought, though, maybe the use of "hand" as a metaphor for
"capable/expert person" is so basic in the context of primate anatomy that
it might be expected to arise independently in different languages?


An analogous point: I guess I've tacitly assumed that "save face",
"thick-faced", etc. were calques from Chinese ... but these expressions are
pretty old in English too ... maybe they arose independently?

-- Doug Wilson