Holiday is an old term for a spot missed when painting or wiping a surface. It’s mentioned in Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Holiday, A Missed Spot”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Kelly Christensen from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Kelly. How are you doing?
I’m fine. How are you?
All right. What’s up?
Well, I had a question about a phrase that my dad used. He actually still uses it. And what he says is, if you’re painting a wall and you’ve missed a spot, he’ll say, you’ve got a holiday up there. He was in the Navy for 28 years. And I think it has something to do with the Navy because I talked to another friend of mine who was in the Navy when I said that same phrase. He said, I haven’t heard that since I was in the Navy. So do you know whether or not that’s a naval term or whether that’s something that everybody knows that I just am not aware of?
If I had a bell, I would ring it.
We need to get a bell.
Yeah, because, Kelly, it does have nautical origins. It goes back farther than the U.S. Navy, though. It goes all the way back to at least the 18th century.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In the classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, which was published in 1785, the definition of a holiday is any part of a ship’s bottom left uncovered in paying it. And the key part here is it is a part of a scam where you would pay somebody to re-tar the bottom of your boat and they would skimp out on the materials and not re-tar the part that you couldn’t see.
But what does holiday have to do with that?
Well, they took off and didn’t show up for work that day. Yeah, the theory is that it has something to do with, like, taking a holiday from the work, just, like, skipping out on it.
Oh, I just hear that.
I hear that now.
Okay.
But you said something about it being in the classical dictionary of a vulgar tongue. Was that a vulgar thing to be talking about in the 1800s, I guess?
Well, it’s back when slang was considered far more pejorative than it is today. It was the language of the underclass, like the cant and slang of the worst sort of rabble and filth that the English-speaking world had to offer.
Yeah, and not necessarily vulgar in the sense that we think of it, but common. Meaning more like vernacular than vulgar.
Yeah, common.
Got it.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Yeah, our pleasure.
Take care now.
All right, you too.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye-bye.
Yeah, I’ve also seen holiday used in terms of dusting.
Right.
You know, like don’t leave any holidays on the table or whatever.
Yeah, because dusting is weird. If the light’s not right, it’s really quite easy to leave this little triangle of dust that you only see later when you’re sitting down to enjoy a snack. Like, oh, I did that.
Right, when the light hits it that one way.
Yeah, or dust bunnies under the bed. But, yeah, a holiday.
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