If You Don’t Chance Your Arm, You Won’t Break Your Neck

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Leah from Atlanta, Georgia.

Hey, Leah, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I’m glad to be here. I listen a lot. And I am here because, and so is my friend Aaron, because we were talking a little while ago, and he gave me a saying that apparently his mother had said to him that I’d never heard before, which was, if you don’t chance your arm, you’ll never break your neck. And I said, what? And we talked about that for a while. And he told me that it’s kind of, as in his understanding, kind of a nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I had certainly never heard this saying before. And I really don’t know why you would want to chance your arm to break your neck at all.

I agree with you. Yeah. Did your friend have any other explanation for it?

Well, would you like to talk with him and find out from him what he knows?

Sure. Let me pass it to Erin.

Hello, this is Erin.

Hi, Erin. So this is an expression your mother used?

Yes, yes. She’s used it, gosh, for decades, as far as I can go back. And she’s never been able to explain to me, you know, I would frequently ask her, why would I want to break my neck?

Gotcha. And you’re not American, I hear.

No, I’m originally born in Wales. The rest of the family is Irish. And we spent some time there in Ireland, hence the strange hodgepodge of an accent you’re getting.

Zia, what’s interesting about this expression, the earliest use of it that I know of in print is actually from Ireland in the 1930s. There was some folklore gathered from schoolchildren, and one of those schoolchildren had this expression in full. If you don’t chance your arm, you won’t break your neck.

But I think what Leah is missing here is that the break your neck isn’t a literal break your neck. It’s the idea of to go all out. This is a rarer idiomatic use of break one’s neck. It means to make the maximum possible effort to do something. So the whole expression has this nuanced meaning of if you never try, then you’ll never go all the way. So that’s what’s missing here is that the first part we all kind of get chance means to risk. So if you don’t take a risk is what chance your arm means. And that expression, that idiomatic expression exists on its own. Chance your arm is very old, goes back to the 1860s. But the last part, that’s a rarer idiom that is rarely used today. Although you might hear somebody say, I risked my neck for you, or I put my neck out for you is a more common way to phrase it, meaning I did everything I could for you.

So it’s more positive.

Yeah, it’s a positive.

Yeah. To break one’s neck or put one’s neck out means to take a chance or to go all out.

Right.

No, that totally makes sense. And given my mother’s age, she was born in the 1930s, so she would have been hearing that then as a child probably when she was growing up.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a couple of strange stories about the possible origins of T’Chance Your Arm, although they’re all kind of dubious, but the one that I think bears repeating, because it is actually on the website of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Supposedly, there were two Irish families in the 15th century who were fighting over the very plumb position of Lord Deputy in Dublin, because there were a lot of perks with that position. They were literally fighting, involving weapons, not just words. And one of the families took refuge in the chapter house of St. Patrick’s Cathedral there in Dublin. And the leader of their opponents was seeking peace. And so he ordered that a hole be cut in a door. And he risked losing his arm by putting his hands in his arm through that hole in hopes that it would be taken for a handshake and not cut off. So people claim, including the cathedral, claim that that is the origins of Chance Your Arm. However, I doubt this.

It’s a very Dublin thing to do, I have to say.

Yeah, a bit of blather to invent an origin story.

Yes, I think so too. And the main problem being that there’s 300 years between that event and the first appearance of Chance Your Arm in print. So that 300 years is a big question mark. Why did it take so long to appear? It’s a fun story. And the door actually exists. So you can actually go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and see the door. So I don’t doubt the story. I just doubt that it’s the origin of the phrase.

-huh.

Okay.

That makes a lot of sense. You can pass it on to Leah and tell her that the part that she was missing was that break your neck means to go all out and to do your utmost. So it sounds like good advice, actually.

That makes sense. And certainly it fits in the context of which my mother is usually using it. So, yeah.

Well, thank you for shining some light on that strange expression.

Yeah, our pleasure. Take care of yourself, and you both give us a call again sometime, all right?

All right. Lovely. Thanks very much.

Bye now.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Aaron.

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