hand over fist/foot

[Wilson Gray]

"Hand over foot"? I've never heard that before. And, at my advanced
age and with any, luck, I won't live long enough to hear it again. ;-)

This is just a random question not requiring a response. But, has
anyone ever wondered about why it is that some words and phrases
strike you as really cool and others strike you as utterly lame?

And then there are words and phrases that were once indispensible
parts of your vocabulary. Then, they vanish. I can't recall when I
last used

takes the meat
eats the green weenie
bites the big one

For a while, I continued to use "in the War" instead of "in the Army,"
because I had an ace, a Navy veteran, who always got the jaws behind
hearing me say it. He felt that I was thereby claiming to have seen
combat.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â hand over fist/foot
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight:
>
> ---
> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/two-birds-one-stone-regulation-and.html
> But they were also making money hand over fist, and so the excesses
> were easy to ignore.
> ---
>
> This originally read "hand over foot" until a commenter said it should
> be "hand over fist" and the text was edited.
>
> "Hand over foot" is well-attested from the late 19C on, though it's
> not yet in the OED. It usually gets used along the lines of OED sense
> a or b for "hand over hand":
>
> ---
> a. With each hand brought successively over the other, as in climbing
> up or down a rope, or rapidly hauling at it.
> b. fig. With continuous advances; said of a vessel, etc. approaching
> or giving chase to another.
> ---
>
> Since the mid-20C "hand over foot" has also been used in the
> money-making sense, like "hand over fist" (OED: "HAND OVER HAND. Also,
> esp., fig. of the making of money"), e.g.:
>
> ---
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,852718,00.html
> Time, Feb. 25, 1946
> The great mass of companies, which did not have to reconvert, went
> right on making money hand over foot.
> ---
>
> And 90+ exx here:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?q="money+hand+over+foot"
>
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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