Charles Earle Funk, author of “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions, The Origin & Development of the Pungent and Colorful Phrases We All Use,” explains the title in the Foreword. His mother would say with a toss of her head, “as independent as a hog on ice” when she “…saw a pompous person strutting down the street, a girl leading the way to a restaurant table without the head waiter’s guidance, a young man with hat atilt jauntily striding along…” “She meant cockily independent, supremely confident, beholden to none.” The author recounts the many literature sources he searched for a clue about the origin and meaning of the expression, and also consulted with experts on hogs. He learned that the smooth pads of a hog’s feet don’t allow the animal to walk on ice. The hog will often have to be dragged off the ice before it attempts to move. He also found that the curling stone is called a “hog” on occasion, and speculates that might have something to do with the origin of the expression. Regardless of the origin, the meaning can be as the author’s mother intended, a description of someone or thing that is awkward or helpless, or used to describe someone who is idiotically independent. Mr. Funk describes his efforts to research the expression in several pages, and you should find a copy of his book if you have further interest in this or the hundreds of other expressions it describes. I bought a used copy from Abebooks.com.
Author Archives: Advocate
Purpose of this “Expressions” Blog
In this “Expressions” blog we offer brief essays on the origination of common expressions, addages, maxims, epigrams, and aphorisms. I’ve developed an interest in colorful sayings, and reinforced that interest when I bought a book, “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” by Charles Earle Funk from Abebooks.com. I will use that book extensively for this “Expressions” blog, and will be certain to explain the expression included in the title.
Book Reviews
I consider myself an “amateur historian,” and have read several books about the Soviet espionage in the United States, and the first review is about the Venona Project which gave the first information about how massive that espionage was.
I intend to intersperse reviews on those books other subjects for those who are less interested in the subject than me. I’ll occasionally write an opinion article based on my reading.
Venona, Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan persuaded the American intelligence community to declassify the Venona Project in 1995, which was more than forty years after the Soviets learned that the project had uncovered their massive espionage penetration of every sensitive department of the United States government. The project began because Colonel Carter Clark did not trust Joseph Stalin. In February 1943 he ordered the Signal Intelligence Service, the Army’s elite code breakers, to attempt to decode cables between Soviet diplomats in the United States and Moscow. The cables were virtually impossible to decode as long as they were sent using a complex two-part ciphering system. However, about 1700 cables, or a bit over one percent of the total were sent in which the “one time pad” had been reused, and that allowed at least partial decoding. “The deciphered cables of the Venona Project identify 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies.” About 200 were never identified except by code name, which means that those people remained in their government and military positions unimpeded in their activities.
The Soviets learned about the Venona project from a high level official in the Roosevelt administration within a year and a half of its origin. Ironically, the first cables weren’t successfully decoded until 1946, which was after the Soviets learned of Venona and had corrected the mistake of reusing the one time pads. Continue reading