How “Break a Leg” May Have Come from German and Yiddish Superstition

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Van from Carlsbad.

Hiya, Van. How are you doing?

Oh, I’m fine.

Very good. And you said you’re from where?

I am a Brazilian who lived in the U.S. for about 40 years.

And I’ve always been interested in popular expressions and meaning and origin.

That’s the reason of my, you know, writing to you about break a leg as the way of a saint wishing to somebody or someone good luck.

It seems the opposite, and I like to talk about it.

I have some opinions, then I have to research the expression and see if my research is in the right direction.

Oh, okay.

So you’re asking about the expression break a leg, which theater and movie people use in order to wish each other good luck before they start a performance, right?

Correct.

And today many people use break a leg besides the theater people.

Sometimes you hear people wishing people good luck saying break a leg, probably without knowing why they are saying something on the opposite sense than what you wanted to happen.

And what theory are you leaning toward, Dan?

Well, I’ve seen so many speculations about the ones that I feel that is the right direction is the superstitious origin.

Because this is one that I see, because I see the term, the expression in German, what they say, break the neck and leg.

Right, they say Hals und Beinbruch.

Hals und Beinbruch.

And it appears that it is a way to not awaken the evil spirits by saying, good luck.

But, you know, the spirits will not then be awakened to say something opposite.

And then you say something bad.

They don’t perceive your intentions.

And, in fact, you know, the good thing can happen.

Exactly, Van.

That’s my sense of it, too, that the idea is that it’s bad luck to wish you good luck.

And probably it comes from what you mentioned, the German Hals und Weinbruch, the may you break your neck and your leg.

The best guess we have is that it came into this country from the German conveyed by people who spoke Yiddish, which makes sense because there’s a lot of tradition in Yiddish language of saying something…

Vaudeville and theater and the like in New York too, right?

Yeah, right, saying something complimentary and then you say Kinnahora, you know, no evil eye.

You don’t want to wish somebody good luck because it’s just testing luck too much.

There are lots of other theories floating around, as you said, like, for example, that when you wish somebody that they’ll break a leg on stage, you’re metaphorically saying, I hope you have to go out there and take a lot of bows and that kind of thing.

Or they, a long time ago, they would stomp the chairs and the chair legs would break.

Oh, my goodness. I hadn’t heard that one.

But I think your instincts are absolutely correct.

It’s a way of wishing someone well without wishing someone well in a way that’s going to offend the forces of fortune.

Well, I appreciate very much that your input was very nice.

Popular expressions are always so neat things that enrich the language, and your program is so nice by doing that.

Oh, thank you so much.

Excellent.

We’re glad to hear it.

Well, to the bang.

We’re glad you called.

Thank you very much, and have a very nice day.

Thank you so much.

Okay, ciao.

All right, bye-bye.

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