Hang Fire

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anita. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Oh, welcome to the program. What can we do for you?

I had an interesting experience last week with a co-worker from the United Kingdom,

And he sent an email with an interesting phrase that I had never heard before.

And when I googled it, there was absolutely no answer on Google, so…

Oh, wow.

I immediately thought I should call A Way with Words.

Immediately.

Immediately.

What was it?

Well, we had been working on something together, and I got some new information.

When I sent it to him, he replied to myself and several other people and said,

Please hang fire on this.

It’s a moving target.

And so I assumed, basically from reading the rest of his email,

That we needed to stop working on the previous information.

But I had never heard hang fire on this.

-huh.

As a phrase.

And when we first discussed it, we weren’t sure if it meant to hurry up or if it meant to not work on it,

Because I was thinking of, you know, light a fire under it.

-huh.

Would be to move faster.

Okay, so nobody in your office.

Or if it was like, to heck with it.

Okay.

Yeah, it’s definitely not an American term.

Americans might know it, but the British use it far more often than we do.

Hang fire.

Do you know anything about guns?

You know, my grandfather used to build guns.

-huh.

Really?

Did he have any of the old-style muskets with the pans that you put the gunpowder in?

He did.

He built muzzleloaders, like Revolutionary War era muzzleloaders.

You’re kidding!

Did you ever see one of these guns not go off when he thought it was going to go off?

No, I never experienced that.

Because that’s what hang fire comes from.

There’s a certain kind of priming.

It’s like a cotton fiber or a twist maybe even that’s got powder embedded in it.

And you light it, and then it sets off the big charge that fires the gun and pushes the bullet and so forth.

But sometimes that priming doesn’t actually do its job.

It just sits there and fuzzles and sputters and sparkles for a little bit and doesn’t actually set off the gun.

So you’ve got this weapon, maybe it’s a cannon, maybe it’s a musket, that’s not going off, and you’re just waiting for it to go off.

And the fire is literally hanging there.

You’re hanging there waiting for the weapon to go off.

You are hanging fire.

That’s what it comes from.

And so by extension, if something is not likely to happen or isn’t going to come to fruition

Or for some reason is delayed or needs to be delayed, it is or you are hanging fire.

Okay.

So tell me more about your grandpa, though.

A gunsmith?

That was his hobby.

He would build Revolutionary War-era guns and Kentucky long rifles.

Oh, yes.

He did a lot of reenactments.

He would do Revolutionary War reenactments and Civil War reenactments.

Oh, how interesting.

Anita, you’ve heard the expression flash in the pan.

I haven’t.

No?

No, if something’s a flash in the pan, it’s like a temporary success or a temporary hit.

Yeah, here to get day gone tomorrow.

But that’s also, Martha brings it up because that’s also from these same kinds of weapons.

The pan, the literal place where you put the gunpowder to set off the weapon.

Yeah, sometimes it would just flash, but it wouldn’t shoot the bullet.

Right.

So we use the expression, flash in the pan.

So maybe I should have asked my uncle what hang fire on this meant.

Oh, it was your uncle? It wasn’t your grandpa?

No, but it’s his son.

So he spent a lot more time with the making of the guns.

I just would occasionally shoot them.

Oh, really?

So hang fire, there you go, Anita, just means for something to be delayed.

Yeah, kind of all grind to a halt.

Yeah.

So it’s just kind of stuck there.

Yeah, it’s stuck.

Well, I like that.

I like that expression.

My team is going to be so excited.

We actually wrote it on our board where we meet every day as a thing to learn about.

Excellent.

There you go.

Well, that’s great, Anita.

I’m glad to help.

Give us a call another time when you’ve got something else.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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