Infoplease.com observes that card players would place a marker, called a “buck” in front of the person who was the dealer. The buck would be passed to the next person who then had the responsibility to deal. The expression “passing the buck” eventually became synonymous with passing responsibility.

I have heard this expression used to describe a situation that has considerable concern about the outcome, as in a flood of uncertainty. An example would be, “The way the stock market is acting lately creates a river of doubt.” I was unaware that the expression originated with the exploration of the Rio da Duvida or the River of Doubt in Brazil. The book “The River of Doubt, Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey” describes the exploration and the brutal conditions the expedition faced. There is a review of that book posted on that link of this web site.

This expression was used by children playing “hide and seek” or “kick the can” to declare that all those who are “out” can come in without risk. Wikipedia speculates that the expression is close to the German phrase “Alle alle ach sind frei, meaning everyone is also free.” There are other versions of the expression, such as “all-y all-y in come free,” which lends credibility to the Wikipedia version of the origin.

I recall playing this game as a small child, which means it was more than six decades ago. The Dictionary of American Regional English says the game was played primarily in the Appalachians, and involved throwing a ball over a building to players on the other side. Someone catching the ball had the “…right to run around to the other side and touch them (and) they had to come to our side.” If the ball wasn’t caught, someone would yell “pigtail” and throw the ball back while yelling “Andy Andy Over” again. An article titled “Before We Lived in Castles We Played Andy Andy Over” says that the game lost favor when we began living in three story homes (castles).

Other names for the game were Andrew-over, Andy-over, Annie-over, Antony-over, anti-over, ankety-over, and probably several other possible variations.

I posted a review of Killing Lincoln today, and thought this idiom was an appropriate selection because of J. Wilkes Booth’s escape from Washington after assassinating President Lincoln. The Phrase Finder describes the meaning as narrowly or barely, and it is usually “…used in regard to a narrow escape from a disaster.” “The phrase first appears in English in the Geneva Bible, 1560, in Job 19:20…’I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe’.” Escaping by the skin of your teeth means there is no margin for error.

The Phrase Finder says the current usage is to describe “impending trouble or other bad consequences from one’s actions. I settled on this expression after posting a review of a book about the Confederate camp for Union prisoners of war at Andersonville. The commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, was hanged (which certainly would be “other bad consequences”) after the war and a rigged trial. The phrase alludes to Faustian pacts in which people forfeit their soul to realize some wish or wanted goal. Thomas Brown wrote in Letters From the Dead to the Living in 1707, “…we knew we should have the Devil to pay…we have pawn’d our Souls…” Sailors named the seam that “…margins the waterways on a ship’s hull…” the Devil, and they called plugging the seam with caulk or tar “paying.” Sailors probably adopted the established phrase to describe the unpleasant task of seam caulking.