History.com explains the phrase “…owes its origin to one legendary night of drunkenness.” The Marquis of Waterford led friends on a night of drinking in the English town of Melton Mowbray in 1837. There was a spree of vandalism, including painting a tollgate, the doors of several homes, and a swan statue red. Another theory about the origin is that it refers to men in the American West behaving badly as if the entire town is a red-light district. One final theory is that it came from the sight of a town being burned by angry Native Americans. I prefer the first theory.

The two words together don’t seem intuitively to result in a meaning that an election or a race has resulted in a tie. Word Wizard says the expression was first used in horse racing. Dead “…means absolute…complete, from the idea of finality of death.” Heat can mean “…a single course or division of a race.” From the fourteenth century heat was taken to mean a “…a single intense effort or bout of action” and the “…single run of a race.” From that explanation, the two words together meaning that something resulted in a virtual tie makes more sense.

Wikipedia explains that the expression refers to “…a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance before death or retirement.” There are a variety of theories about the origin, but all relate to the fact that swans are believed to sing early in life and are then silent until they sing a beautiful song before they die. Aesop, Socrates, and Aristotle all mention the expression, which had become a proverb by the third century BC. They don’t mention that it refers to retirement, which is the common use today.

There are recent allegations this is a racist term, but the origin is from ancient times and has nothing to do with race. Charles E. Funk in his book, “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” explains that the Greek works for spade, boat, and bowl are quite similar. The original expression was likely “to call a boat a boat,” which was intended to say, just as with the current version, “…to call a thing by its right name to avoid euphemism or beating around the bush.” To lend credibility to that theory of the origin, Erasmus said in the sixteenth century, “…to call a fig a fig and a boat a boat.”

This will be a bit of a departure from the norm, since the focus won’t be on the origin of the expression, which was and is used to describe someone who is foolish and scatterbrained. Scientists have made another important contribution to knowledge by studying birds and learned that birds aren’t all that foolish or scatterbrained. “An international consortium of 29 neuroscientists has proposed a drastic renaming of the structures of the bird brain to correctly portray birds as more comparable to mammals in their cognitive ability. The scientists assert that the century-old traditional nomenclature is outdated and does not reflect new molecular, genetic and behavioral studies that reveal the brainpower of birds.” Their studies (how did they get the money to do these studies?) have found birds have all sorts of “cognitive abilities.”

Thanks scientists, for setting us straight! However, I’m guessing if someone does something foolish and/or scatterbrained, they will likely still be called “birdbrain.”