This expression means to retaliate against some sort of attack or injury. The expression is posted this week as a companion to a review of the book “The World Set Free” by H. G. Wells. The book, written in 1913, describes how atomic bombs are used to destroy Paris and an aviator sets out with three atomic bombs to drop on Berlin, “tit for tat.”

The expression was used as early as 1556 and may have been variations in how to say “this for that.” Also, “tit and tat” are “…both the names of small blows that originated as ‘tip and tap’.”

The Washington Post did a piece on this saying, quoting author Caroline Taggart,  saying it was first used in the 1860s as a longer rhyming couplet that has become more succinct over time. A phrase from the 1860s is recent to Taggart, though “The fruit also pops up in traditional Ayurvedic medicine, dating back about 1,500 years in southern Asia,” though the word “apple” could mean any round fruit grown on a tree.

Skeptics SE mentions an Italian version of the saying. The UK’s Phrase Finder specifies the source as the1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine which quoted this as a Pembrokeshire proverb, so the phrase was already in use.

One of my favorite books, “A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions” by Charles Earle Funk, explains, “Anciently, a blush was a glimpse, a momentary view.” The expression evolved from that explanation of the expression to mean “…to redden as from embarrassment or shame.” I didn’t find an explanation why the expression evolved from meaning “a momentary view” to the current use  as described by Dictionary.com of “reddening from embarrassment.” Perhaps that is a mystery of the evolution of language.

Wikipedia says the term originally was used to describe an axeman serving in a U.S. military unit. “Towards the end of the 19^th century, the phrase was used to describe a Chinese assassin who carried a handleless hatchet…”  The common current use is to describe a person who performs unpleasant tasks such as firing people for a superior. It is also used in sports to describe someone who is given the role of retaliating against opposing players.

The candy bar by this name was one of my favorites when I was a youngster, but the term is described by the Phrase Finder as “A name playfully applied to someone who fails to catch a ball or lets something slip from their fingers.” I was surprised that Charles Dickens used the term in The Pickwick Papers written in 1836. “At every bad attempt at a catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations of ‘Ah, ah! – stupid- Now, butter-fingers’.” The Phrase Finder points out there was reference to the term as early as 1615, when it was used to describe “…someone likely to drop things – as if their hands were smeared with butter, like a cook’s.”