At the drop of a fly or a hat or a goose
The other day I was talking to a friend and I mentioned that something was “dropping like flies.”
And then I paused to wonder what on earth is the origin of the phrase. After all, it’s not as though we see flies dropping right and left, struck down in mid-flight. Why not “dropping like fall leaves?” Why flies?
So I looked it up and found that nobody knows the answer. Oh, there’s speculation, the leading one being that the life of a fly is short. But that doesn’t make sense to me in terms of the expression, because it’s not as though we notice the brief span of the individual life of the individual fly: “Oh, that cute one I named Henry was around yesterday but I haven’t seen him today; I wonder if his short life is over? I wonder if he dropped—like a fly?”
The best explanation was the one I’d suspected all along, and it involves what happens when we swat a fly. It drops immediately, like a stone—or like a dead fly.
All of this brought to mind the phrase “at the drop of a hat.” I had to guess at that one, too, and I thought maybe they used to start races by dropping hats. That seemed a bit dubious, but sure enough, it turned out to be the case, at least partially:
In the 19th century it was occasionally the practice in the United States to signal the start of a fight or a race by dropping a hat or sweeping it downward while holding it in the hand. The quick response to the signal found its way into the language for any action that begins quickly without much need for prompting.
Then there’s that old expression, “to drop like a goose.” You never heard it? Well, watch this clip, which I found in a link at Ace’s (some language here):
Language warning. pic.twitter.com/p3rGV1bIWG
— Yitz, Red, White, and Jew (@MeerkatYitz) July 13, 2018
Yeah, I know; there’s no expression “drop like a goose.” However, while watching that, I thought, “Hey, those guys could actually tell their wives that they were on a wild goose chase.”
That phrase is nicely illustrated by the video. It’s awfully hard and awfully tiring to try to catch a goose. The phrase has a long history:
Our current use of the phrase alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless – and it’s hard to imagine anything more doomed to failure than an attempt to catch a wild goose by chasing after it. Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare’s day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A ‘wild goose chase’ was a race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation.
Hey, it’s better than talking about politics—right?
Just a guess, but perhaps “dropping like flies” has to do with the first frosts of autumn/winter.
If your place isn’t heated, or if only some room are, when temperatures plummet, flies go dormant and collect all over the place, particular on window sills.
Once you start heating the place up, though, the flies (or at least some of them) will perk up and return to their pesky selves.
Just an idea….
Samuel Johnson said that an essay is a loose sally of the mind. As much as I like Sally, I like sally even more.
The Scorpion and the Frog story has similarly vague origins. That’s the one where a frog ferries a scorpion to the other side of the river but the scorpion stings the frog anyway, then explains, “It’s my nature to do so.” They both drown.
I thought the story was an Aesop Fable or something from the Arabian Nights, but not really. Similar stories do exist from different traditions, but the earliest version with all specifics intact is from Orson Welles’s “Mr. Arkadin.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPDgGxLb2OM
I saw the goose video. My first thought was Down goes Brown!
https://youtu.be/WiPxTEG2Ax8
Mayflies drop like flies.
Perhaps the origin of “dropping like flies” is of more recent origin. It sounds like something a state trooper in the security detail for Gov BJ Clinton might have coined.
Sexton Beetle is right about Mayflies.
They litter the ground.
Reminds me of the story of the Brave Little Tailor striking down flies “Seven in one blow!”