Not Chopped Liver (1947); Texas Toast (1960); Ants on a Log (1983)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:46 AM -0500 12/27/03, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>But your recent antedating of "ball of wax" has destroyed a nice
>>theory I had about it.
>
>My default hypothesis would be that "ball of wax" in this sense originated
>as an 'intentional malapropism' for "bailiwick".
>
>This would be analogous to (and conceivably the model for?) "[mind your
>own] beeswax" for "business".
>
>It would seem that "ball o' wax" was available early enough to be picked up
>for the malapropism (with the meaning "shoemaker" ... although the meaning
>-- as with "beeswax" -- is presumably of no significance). No etymological
>legend about balls of wax is required IMHO.
>
>-- Doug Wilson

Aren't the meanings too different here?  Unlike the case of
"beeswax", which in the expression "Mind your own ____" really just
means 'business', a "bailiwick" is a domain or (in the AHD's term) 'a
person's specific area of interest', which isn't at all the same as
the whole ball o' wax (the universe, the whole thing, whatever.  ('an
unspecified set of circumstances'--AHD4)  "Bailiwick" is standardly
used with the possessive, the person defining the relevant domain,
"ball o' wax" isn't.  I don't see this as fertile ground for
reanalysis.

Larry