Make Ends Meet

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

I’m doing well. Who’s this?

This is Helena from Indianapolis.

Hi, Helena.

Hello.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

I have a question regarding the saying to make ends meet.

I received a call from a good friend about a month ago,

And she was questioning if I knew that the spelling of the word meet

And the saying to make ends meet was spelled M-E-E-T.

And the funny thing was that the both of us had never read this thing before and had only overheard it.

And we both thought that the spelling was meat, M-E-A-T, like the food.

And we just associated it with having enough money to put food on the table.

So, you know, I guess I’m just wondering if maybe you guys have a good background of the saying

And maybe kind of clear up why it’s spelled M-E-E-T.

Okay, so make ends meet as in having a sufficient amount, right?

Right.

Enough to go around.

So you’d rationalized it to believe that meant having enough money to put meat on the table.

Right, because as a child, pretty much I only heard it as while at the grocery store shopping.

You’re just like, hey, mom, buy this.

She’d be like, well, we’re making ends meet.

So I’d always just associate it with food.

We have enough money to put food on the table.

Okay.

I can see how you would think that.

Yeah, that’s logical.

It’s a logical rationalization.

It isn’t etymologically or orthographically sound.

It is M-E-E-T, but you made sense of it when you needed to, right?

Yeah.

Right.

This comes to English from French, where the expression is joindre les deux bouts, to join the two ends.

And it means in French still the same thing as it means in English.

And apparently this goes back to one of two origins and I think they’re actually intertwined.

You talk about a budget or for a week or a year or a month meeting your needs through the end of

That budget period and so sometimes you might come up short until the next paycheck so you want the

Beginning of the next period which is an end of itself to meet with the end of the last period so

You’d have these two ends meet right. You might even borrow against your advanced earnings in

Order to make the two ends meet.

And that’s one explanation.

But more interestingly is the one that comes from sailing and ships and seafaring and so forth,

Which is it used to be common to take old ropes that might be frayed or broken

And to splice them together in order to make a new rope.

Because you take the twine or the sisal and why throw it out when you can just reuse it?

And so you literally make the ends of the ropes meet.

So it’s sort of like Avatar.

Yeah.

Have you seen Avatar yet?

Yeah, but what about Avatar?

You know, where they take the end of their tail and they make the ends meet and then they have this bond.

They interface with the mother planet and so forth.

I understand.

Yeah, something like that.

Something like that.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anybody who is a rope splicer, but it’s an incredibly intricate activity and it requires a high level of skill.

And obviously, if you’re using these ropes for things that are like sailing ships, there’s life in the balance.

So you have to do it well.

I haven’t seen a rope splicer.

I don’t know.

It’s really interesting.

You have, Grant?

I have, yeah.

Have you held in?

It was like one of those old-timey fair thingies where everyone pretends to be from 150 years ago or 200 years ago.

It was really interesting.

Huh.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thanks, guys.

It was a pleasure talking to you.

Great talking with you, too.

All right.

You have a good day.

Bye-bye.

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