Lucy, a middle-school student in San Diego, California, is puzzled by a phrase her mother uses when something is not quite up to snuff or falls short of the mark: close, but no tomato. It appears to be a variant of close, but no cigar, a phrase adopted from the patter of old-time carnival barkers. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Close But No Tomato”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Lucy from San Diego.
So my question is about a phrase that my mom says a lot. And that usually is when somebody has like made a guess about something or tried to do something, but they were unsuccessful. Then she always says, oh, close, but no tomato. And she’s always said tomato, but I think the original one is probably cigar or something like that. But I’ve always just wondered where that came from and why we say it.
Huh. Well, you’re absolutely right that the much older one is Close But No Cigar. And do you know the origin of that one?
No, I have no idea.
Well, it’s pretty cool. It refers to an old carnival game in which somebody could show how strong they are by hitting something with a giant hammer, and it pushes a weight up along a kind of column that goes up and rings a bell. You may have seen it in cartoons, you know, where somebody…
Yeah, I’ve seen those before.
Yeah. OK. And it rings the bell if the person is really strong, right, because it goes all the way to the top. Back in the early 20th century, it used to be that the reward for doing that at many carnivals was a cigar. The cigar was the prize. And so, you know, you had the carnival barkers standing there trying to get more people to to come and play this game. And if they almost missed the bell and it didn’t ring, they’d say close but no cigar, which meant that the person had pushed it far up there but not far enough to win the prize. That is a cigar.
And we don’t really see close but no tomato until the 1980s or so. It’s a much more recent term. I don’t know that we really know why it’s a tomato, except that it’s a little healthier than a cigar. And it’s kind of funny, right?
Yeah.
I always thought that my mom had switched it out because she didn’t want to be saying cigar when we were little.
Oh.
No, it’s more people say it. That was always my take on it.
More people say it than your mom. I mean, she might have come up with her version on her own, but it’s out there. We found it in books and newspapers, and you can find other people who’ve said it and print on the Internet.
Yeah, but that’s a really good guess.
Yeah.
Wow, that’s really cool. So close but no tomato. Do you say it yourself, or do you just laugh when your mom says it?
Sometimes I say it a little bit. It’s usually my mom, though. The earliest version that we found in print of Close But No Tomato was from a textbook for people who wanted to go into broadcast news. Does your mom work in broadcast news?
No, she does not.
Okay, just thought I’d ask. That’s really cool, though.
Okay, well, cool. Thank you, Lucy, for giving us a call. We really appreciate it. My whole family really loves your show, so this is really exciting.
That’s nice.
All right, take care of yourself.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thanks, Lucy.
Bye-bye.
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