The cleverly named “Buy n Large” corporation in the movie Wall-E has a caller wondering why we say use the phrase “by and large” to mean “generally speaking.” It has its origins on the high seas. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “By and Large”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Rebecca Yonashkan from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hiya, Rebecca.
Hello.
What’s on your mind?
Well, my husband and I have been debating the meaning of the phrase by and large.
By and large.
By and large.
What brought this to your mind?
Well, my sons, Bart and Leo, received a copy of the movie Wall-E recently, and we’ve been watching it. Constantly. And in one of our many viewings, my husband and I started to ponder the meaning of this phrase because a large kind of mega corporation that runs the world, essentially, in that movie is called By and Large, but it’s spelled a little differently. It’s kind of a play on the phrase, spelled B-U-Y, and then the letter N, and large. So you’re wondering where we get the expression, the regular expression by and large, meaning generally speaking or something like that, right?
Yes.
I guess, what is the origin of that? And then I think there are probably many ways that that use or that phrase has then worked into the movie, Wally, even though they never really come out and explain. You just have to kind of infer from watching the scenes.
Well, you know, what’s really interesting, Rebecca, about the expression by and large is that it’s a nautical term.
Yes, a quick, you know, internet search yielded that.
-huh, -huh.
My father, as a former naval officer, kind of read that. I ran it by him, and he said, well, you know, I think it’s sailing by the wind and large of the wind. And he kind of explained the difference there, either sailing into the wind but still using it to move the boat.
Right.
Or sailing with the wind at your back or large in the wind.
That’s pretty much it. Every time we talk about sailing on the show, people call us and correct us.
Maybe he will, too.
But that’s my sense of it is that you can sail by, which is when you’re sort of sailing toward the wind, into the wind, and you don’t have quite as much maneuverability. And then to sail large, the wind is coming from a different direction, and you have a lot more maneuverability in the boat. So the combination of by and large is all the different directions that the ship might be able to point. It makes perfect sense to me that it would be generalized in all possible circumstances or generally speaking.
So that fit with what he was thinking, right?
Yes.
And then we kind of took it back to Wally and said, well, okay, it looks like they’re kind of saying, gee, if we can continue to consume at this rate, by and large, we may, I don’t know if we’re going to end up being shot into space, but we may significantly deplete our resources.
Well, good point, yes.
Further deplete them, yes.
Yeah.
Further deplete them.
Yeah.
I never thought about by and large with a U until the WALL-E movie.
That’s a nice pun, though.
Chains of stores tend to do that sort of thing, don’t they?
Yeah, pretty brilliant.
Yeah, WALL-E is a bit of a paradox in that way because the movie’s kind of got an anti-consumerism message, and yet they are marketing the living heck out of the DVD, aren’t they?
Oh, yes.
And my two-and-a-half-year-old now sleeps with the little WALL-E character. So we’ve gone into it.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, thank you so much for your call, Rebecca.
Thank you.
All right.
You’re welcome.
Happy viewing.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
The number to call if you’ve got a question about sailing is, I don’t know, what is A Way With Boats? It’s not this show.
That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.
