Cut the Mustard vs. Cut the Muster

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eric Gandel from West Lafayette, Indiana.

West Lafayette. Hi, Eric. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

I was having a discussion with my family regarding the phrase being too old to cut the mustard, and my son said he’d never heard it.

So I was wondering if you had any insights on this.

Too old to cut the mustard or too old to cut the mustard was sort of our debate going back and forth as to which one it was originally.

What was the conversation about when this came up?

What was happening?

What was meant by that?

I think I said I was too old to do something anymore, and I think I said I was too old to cut the mustard, and my son goes, I’ve never heard that in my life.

He’s 22, and I was like, oh, well, it’s not something I say all the time.

Yeah, and 22 is young enough where most things are new still.

Yeah, and my wife had said she always thought it was too old to cut the mustard, and I remember on a cruise we took a long time ago that we had the mustard was where they showed you where the lifeboats and life vests were.

And I thought, well, that makes sense too, because at some point in your age, you’re like, well, maybe I need to know where the life vests are on this boat.

So you’re too old to cut the mustard.

But then also harvesting mustard is also hard work, bending over and cutting plants.

I’m just not for sure.

So we’re talking about mustard, M-U-S-T-A-R-D, versus mustard, M-U-S-T-E-R.

What do you think, Martha?

The more common phrase is cut the mustard, like the, like the thing that you slather on food, cut the mustard.

And, you made the point that, that mustard actually is, a hard plant to cut.

It’s a fibrous plant and it can be kind of challenging, especially when it gets tall.

But we think that it probably, the phrase probably goes back to the idea of mustard just being this kind of spicy condiment.

In fact, as early as the 1600s, people were talking about something being as hot as mustard or as strong as mustard or as keen as mustard.

It may be that the idea of cutting mustard and the spicy quality of mustard sort of reinforced the idea, but most likely it comes from the idea of the spice itself, of it being spicy and strong and keen.

So you’d be too old to cut the mustard, then you’d be too old to have spicy food or too old to not?

It’s not literal.

Well, not literally. Yeah, not literally.

Yeah, the cut is a little bit problematic, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, the cut is problematic.

One of the earliest uses we know of in print talks about someone not being tall enough to cut the mustard.

Because as Martha said, the plant can grow tall.

So it’s somebody who is short maybe in mental stature rather than physical stature when we use it figuratively.

There is another aspect specifically to the form too old to cut the mustard.

And it has to do with a lack of male virility.

Oh.

I don’t think you were saying that about yourself, Eric, but correct me if I’m wrong.

I was too old to lift, I think, a heavy box is what it was.

I think that was the…

Part of what’s happening here is that Cut the Mustard is being confused with Pass Mustard, and those are different.

The last is M-U-S-T-E-R, and the first is M-U-S-T-A-R-D.

Cut the mustard with a D and pass muster with just an R at the end, have become synonyms, but they didn’t start out that way.

Yeah, mustard historically has been a sort of positive idea.

You might talk about somebody being mustered back in the early 20th century, and that meant to be sharp-witted or to be very good or excellent.

So it’s all sort of mixed up in there, sort of slathered like something on food.

Mixed up like good condiments.

Yeah, yeah.

Like the continent, right?

Yes, yes.

Eric, thank you so much for sharing this little anecdote with us, and I hope it helped.

Nope. Thank you, guys. Love your show.

Yeah, take care. Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling, Eric.

I know.

You can pass muster easily. Just call us, 877-929-9673, and spill your guts into our voicemail.