Footloose and Fancy-Free

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Eric Chonko, calling from Harrisonburg, Virginia.

All right, well, welcome. What can we do for you?

Well, I was talking to my daughter-in-law, Kimmy, and she was talking about her friends that had just sold their home, and they were going to travel Alaska for a couple years.

And I said to her, that’s a good way to be, footloose and fancy free.

And so I was kind of wondering, I kind of know the meaning of it, but where did it come from or how old is that saying?

Footloose and fancy free. What did you mean by it?

Well, for me, it meant someone that was kind of carefree, didn’t want to be tied down.

The fancy free, I think, kind of means you’re not attached to materials and you’re okay living with maybe a little bit less.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

So the footloose and fancy free is a combo of two expressions that kind of have their own lives and their own histories before they merge in the mid-1800s.

Footloose is old. It goes back to the mid-1600s.

And it’s this idea that you literally are footloose. Your feet are loose.

Imagine a horse that is not hobbled or an animal that is not hobbled.

So if you would, say, take an animal for sale to a market, you would tie up one of their feet so that they can’t walk.

And you don’t even have to tie it to a post if you hobble a horse correctly because they can’t walk on three legs.

So they are not footloose. They are the opposite of footloose.

And so by extension, a person who is footloose is a person who’s not hobbled and can go about freely as they wish.

I have at least eight nautical dictionaries that repeat an incorrect story about footloose that has to do with the River Thames and barges and some part of the boat being loose.

That is a false story.

So if you see a dictionary that repeats this incorrect information, footloose does not come from sailing.

Martha, this is an example of canoe again.

Canoe, right.

You remember the acronym?

Which is an acronym for…

Constantly attributing nautical origins to everything.

Origins to everything, right.

But the full expression for footloose and fancy free shows up in the U.S. South, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky in the mid-1800s.

Fancy free is related to this notion that you fancy someone, which has never really been an Americanism.

But if you watch British films and television, particularly historical ones, you may have run across it.

If you fancy someone, you find them attractive or find them appealing.

You have a liking for them.

And so to be fancy free is to not have that kind of that burden of love’s affliction, so to speak.

You are not burdened by an attachment to people or places or things, just as you mentioned.

You don’t have to have all these things in your lives to feel comfortable.

So to be footloose and fancy free is to not be hobbled and not to have the burden of attachments to people, things, and places.

Wow.

That is fascinating.

There’s more to that than I thought.

Yeah, there’s plenty to it.

There usually is.

Yeah, there usually is, but that’s the gist of it.

Well, gee, I fancy running around Alaska for a couple of years.

No kidding.

I know.

That sounds so fun.

Yeah, that sounds like a lifetime, an adventure of a lifetime.

Wow.

Boy, you could spend a lot more than two years exploring Alaska and never be done with it.

That’s true. That’s true.

Well, Eric, thank you so much for your time and your call. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

All right. Be well.

Good talking with you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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