Is it Really the Brush? Odd Expressions in English

We've all heard the expression. Someone criticises a particular group of people - be they immigrants, fast food employees, stock brokers, bankers, or fighter pilots - and someone else will say, "You shouldn't tar them all with the same brush."

The expression, of course, comes from the days when the populace occasionally illustrated their displeasure with someone by coating them in tar and dumping feathers on them. Never an authorised punishment in the New World, it did have some degree of official sanction in England, the earliest recorded instance being found in the orders issued by Richard I to his navy as they headed for the Holy Land in 1191. By Richard's command, any "theife or felon," after being lawfully convicted, was to "have his head shorne, and boyling pitch poured upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same whereby he may be knowen." In the United States, the practice was especially popular when dealing with the British Customs service and its informers (1).

Of course, the idea behind the expression is that just because someone belongs to the same group as a person who has given offence, you shouldn't judge them solely on the basis of it. As a piece of advice, I can't help but to agree.

It's the expression itself that puzzles me.

Suppose I've been rounded up along with someone who has sinned against the community and they've decided the only proper punishment is a good old tarring and feathering. Is it really the use of the same brush that I'm going to find objectionable?

Another puzzling expression arises when we dismiss someone's abilities by saying that they "don't cut the mustard." While someone incapable of performing the simple task of cutting mustard is admittedly not very skillful, holding this criterion up as a standard of competence doesn't seem to be setting the bar particularly high.

The origins of this particular phrase are long obscured. Some believe it is a corruption of "muster," as in the ability to "pass muster" or to pass inspection as in a muster of troops. Others hold that it refers to the addition of vinegar to the mustard seed as a means of "cutting" its bitterness.

While some authorities claim that the first recorded instance of this expression, which seems to be American in origin, is to be found in a 1902 story by O. Henry, Gary Martin at The Phrasefinder has turned up an earlier example (1897) from The Iowa State Reporter in which a headline about the rivalry between two towns reads: "Dubuque had the crowds, but Waterloo 'Cut the Mustard.'" As they point out, the quotations around the words, along with a complete lack of explanation, strongly indicates that readers probably were already acquainted with the phrase(2).

Whatever the ultimate origin, I'm not about to bend over backwards trying to find out.

Not that I have any idea how such an awkward position could possibly help.

------- References ---------

1. Wikipedia Author. "Tarring and feathering." Wikipedia. 2009. Wikimedia Foundation. Web.10 Aug. 2009.

2. Martin, Gary. "Cut the mustard." The Phrase Finder. 2009. The Phrase Finder. Web.10 Aug. 2009.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Simpson is an editor and marketing image consultant who teaches all levels of English at a major Toronto college.

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