The saying “close but no cigar” comes from the famous carnival game wherein a bold fellow tries to swing a sledgehammer hard enough to make a bell ring. The winner of the game, which was popular around 1900, would win a cigar. The game still exists, of course, but tobacco is no longer an appropriate prize for a family game. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Close, But No Cigar”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Jane Coyle. I’m calling from Vero Beach, Florida.
Vero Beach, Florida. They’re on the Atlantic, right?
Yeah, right?
Yes.
Awesome. Welcome to the show. What’s up? What can we help with?
Thank you very much. I was playing tennis with some friends of mine a few weeks ago, and my opponent hit the ball out, and I said, out? And she said, oh, come on, it was close, wasn’t it? And I said, close, but no cigar. And it got me thinking, where did that expression come from?
And so I was thinking about it, talking with some people, and thinking, was it W.C. Fields? Because of the way people always kind of say, close, but no cigar. Or, I don’t know, was it Mae West? But then I remembered that that was more of a banana that she was talking about and not a cigar.
Yeah, a whole different thing. It’s even farther back in time than that.
Really?
Yep. It refers to the old carnival game of strength where you’ve seen it in cartoons, at least I’m sure, where the contestant hits a lever with a sledgehammer and tries to make this weight go up high enough to ring a bell. And it was called high ball or high striker. And if you did that in the old fashioned carnivals around the turn of the 20th century, then you got a cigar. Cigars were often given out as prizes in carnivals.
That is amazing. You know, I talked to my husband about this, too, and he said, I think it had something to do with a carnival.
There you go. So, okay, he’s going to be right again. So you’ve got to remember, though, there’s all this chatter happening. And the way you bring in more customers, you’ve got this barker doing this nonstop patter. And so part of their patter was, close but no cigar.
Who’s up next? That is so cool. And so you’re just watching, thinking, oh, I can do that. That guy is puny. Look at me.
I’m strong.
Yeah, I can do that.
Ring that bell.
So now we all say it.
It’s weird, though, that that carnival culture word should penetrate so far that we don’t know where it comes from without calling a radio show, right?
I know.
I know.
A tennis match.
It comes all the way to the tennis court in Fero Beach, Florida.
That’s exactly what I was going to say.
Well, thank you very much.
Yeah, sure.
That was fun.
Our pleasure.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
So we’re talking about more than 100 years for that expression, right?
Yeah.
That’s cool.
Yeah, close, but no cigar.
You can just see it in your, I mean.
Oh, absolutely.
To me, it’s always the Bugs Bunny cartoons where that…
Right, exactly.
Right?
Or Popeye and Brutus.
Mel Blanc with his particular New York accents that he does.
Yeah.
Close button.
Oh, let’s go.
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