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<div align="left"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="6"><span style=" font-size:24pt"><b>World Wide Words</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:0.00mm; margin-bottom:2.11mm;"><font face="Arial" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>3 December 2014</i></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>The piece below is an updated version of one first written in 1999.</i></span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Get my goat</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>Q. </i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">From Selinda Chiquoine: My new puppy has really gotten my goat, and I
was wondering how the heck that phrase came to be?</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">A. In 1927, a writer in the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Brazil Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> — not the country, but the place in
Indiana — commented this was “one of the most absurd slang phrases in the
English language”. It’s hard to disagree, though plenty of candidates for the
accolade come to mind. Even worse, nobody has much of a clue where it comes
from.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Our usual meaning is that somebody has goaded or teased another into signs of
irritation or has — accidentally or deliberately — exasperated or annoyed them.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">It has recently attracted attention from several language researchers. So far,
we’ve been able to establish that it’s definitely American and that it had entered
the language by 1903, when the famous boxer Kid McCoy was reminiscing
about his exploits: </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">I made a grievous mistake at the beginning of that fight. I started out to
“get his goat,” so to speak, and I succeeded only too well. Stowart was so
frightened that he wouldn't fight.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:1.06mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia" color="#006000">
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>Indianapolis Sun</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 5 Dec. 1903.</span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">The idiom became very popular in the US and by 1914 had been taken to
Canada, Britain, Australia and other countries. </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">The most frequent story that attempts to explain it relates to horse racing in
North America and to the common practice of putting an animal in a horse’s
stall to befriend and calm it. The story says that a goat was the most common
companion and that enterprising villains capitalised on the association by
gambling on the horse to lose and then stealing the goat. A substantial ability to
suspend one’s disbelief is needed to accept this at face value.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Other people have tried to identify it in some way with </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>scapegoat</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, have seen it
as a variant form of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>goad</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, and have linked it with an old French phrase
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>prendre la chèvre</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> (to take the goat). It has been claimed that at one time some
residents of Harlem in New York kept goats and thereby annoyed their
neighbours, an explanation that fails to satisfy. Another links it with the late
nineteenth-century fashion for men to sport goatee beards, which children
mocked with bleating noises. Another suggestion comes from a book of 1904
entitled </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Life in Sing Sing</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, in which </span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>goat</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is glossed as meaning anger. But
evidence is lacking for all of them. The writer in the </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Brazil Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> tried another
tack:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">The origin of this phrase is essentially the same as that of the verb “to kid”
and the other form “kidding.” A goat frolicking about is an absurd sight.
“Don’t play the giddy goat” is an old expression for “Don’t make a silly
fool of yourself.” “To kid” is “to make a fool of,” since kids are really more
foolish acting creatures than their parents, the goats. When one is
eminently successful in kidding another he is said to “get his goat.”</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">This is a sensible suggestion but once again there’s no evidence.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">However — at the risk of being responsible for starting a new spurious tale
about its origins — one other strange usage exists. While looking for </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>get my
goat</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, I repeatedly encountered the same notionally humorous story. This is its
earliest appearance I can find:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">Mr. and Mrs. Jones were starting for Church. “Wait dear,” said the lady,
“I’ve forgotten something; won’t you go up and get my goats off the
bureau?” “Your goats,” replied Jones, “what new fangled thing’s that?”
“I’ll show you, remarked the wife, and she sailed up stairs and down again
with a pair of kids [kid gloves] on her hands; ‘‘there they are,” said she.
“Why I call those things kids,” said the surprised husband. “Oh, do you!”
snapped the wife. “Well so did I once, but they are so old now, I’m
ashamed to call them anything but goats.” Then they went on to church
and smiled sweetly on their friends, and put a nickel in the missionary
box, and the next day Jones’ wife had a half dozen pairs of new gloves in a
handsome lacquered box of the latest design.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:1.06mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia" color="#006000">
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>Steubenville Weekly Herald</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt"> (Steubenville, Ohio), 26 Mar. 1880.</span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">You may groan at the weakness of the joke, but it must have been a
thigh-slapping, rib-tickling wonder of the times to judge by how often it was
repeated. I counted 48 examples between 1880 and 1900 in American
newspapers; it crossed the Atlantic within a year and at least a dozen versions
appeared in British newspapers in the following two decades; it was almost
immediately taken to Australia, where at least 38 versions were published
between 1884 and 1904 (at this point I stopped counting).</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">I’m not suggesting it’s the direct origin of the expression, but the phrase </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>get my
goats</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> must have been put into the minds of a lot of people through repetitions
of the joke. This might have been combined with some slang usage of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>goat</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> —
perhaps a play on </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>kid</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> — to make the idiom we now have.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Sic</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">The British comedian, actor, author and campaigner Russell Brand won the
2014 </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Foot in Mouth Award</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> yesterday evening from the Plain English
Campaign for examples of incoherent prose like this from his book </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Revolution</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">This attitude of churlish indifference seems like nerdish deference
contrasted with the belligerent antipathy of the indigenous farm folk, who
regard the hippie-dippie interlopers, the denizens of the shimmering tit
temples, as one fey step away from transvestites.</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Useful information</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:11pt">
<b>About this newsletter</b></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">: World Wide Words is researched, written and published by
Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice are provided by Julane
Marx, Robert Waterhouse, John Bagnall and Peter Morris. Any residual errors are the fault of
the author. The linked website is http://www.worldwidewords.org.</span></font></p>
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