Thirteen and the odd

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Whilst researching "soup and fish" the other day for a subscriber, I found
>"thirteen and the odd" as another term for male formal evening wear, which
>seems to have been known a little in the first half of last century. Does
>anyone have any idea where it comes from?

Well, I've surely drawn a blank on this one. Anybody else done any better?

I found the expression as early as 1914, IIRC. I found the alternative form
"thirteen and odd".

I REALLY doubt any reference to sailors' flies.

Here are three lines of thought which didn't lead anywhere for me; possibly
one will be useful in some way.

(1) In the late 19th century, whist was the big card game. I found one Web
reference to "thirteen-and-the-odd whist" (presumably a form of whist) but
I couldn't find anything else about it. I found one late 19th century
passing reference to "thirteen-and-odd" as some kind of card game. In whist
(bridge too, I guess) "the odd" would presumably mean "the odd trick",
i.e., more-or-less the winning trick in most forms (I think). Thirteen
would be the total number of tricks, of course, or the number of cards in a
suit. I doubt that the formal suit was named after a card game, and I don't
see why the card game would be named after a suit of clothes. Conceivably,
"thirteen and the odd" might be a cute oblique reference to the word
"trick" as in "trick suit" [= "fancy suit" or so] or "all tricked out", but
this is a boardinghouse reach, I guess. By serendipity, I recently was
reading Anstey's "The Tinted Venus" [1885 or so], a short novel which is
not about whist but which has a chapter entitled "The Thirteenth Trump" (a
whist reference by internal evidence), with the next chapter entitled "The
Odd Trick": these are metaphors for events in the plot, I guess.

(2) By analogy with "soup and fish", "thirteen and the odd" might refer to
a fancy meal, i.e., thirteen courses plus the odd something [sherbet,
beverage, whatever]: very extravagant dinners apparently did have 12-14
courses.

(3) Perhaps the outfit was thought to have thirteen major pieces (coat,
waistcoat, hat, gloves, etc., etc.) plus the odd something (studs,
cufflinks, whatever).

Not even a healthy WAG!

-- Doug Wilson

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