Off Like a Dirty Shirt

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Walter from Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Walter, welcome.

How can we help?

Thank you. I have a question.

My great-grandfather always used to say a saying. Every time we’d leave or we’d get ready to go anywhere, he would always begin or end it with, and we’re off like a dirty shirt. And so I was just wondering if you know any information about that, where it came from, or if he just made it up, or if it’s a popular saying back in the day.

So off like a dirty shirt, this means you’re leaving or leaving quickly?

Yeah, we’re leaving quickly or we’re going somewhere quickly. We’re headed to a destination quickly.

Yeah, so I can see that. There’s a number of slang expressions that are similar. This one is not as common as off like a prom dress. And the Australians say off like a bride’s nightie. They all have to do with something that happens urgently and quickly. The Australians actually have a couple others as well. One of them is off like a bucket of prawns. And by that off, I think they mean spoiled.

Oh, off.

Or maybe they mean eaten really fast like a bucket of prawns, I’m sure.

Oh, okay.

But a dirty shirt.

But a dirty shirt. It’s really interesting. This one pops up again and again. And when I first looked into this, I thought, oh, 1920s, 1930s, surely. And then the further I dug, I realized that it dates to the 1700s.

What?

Yeah, to this play by Henry Fielding. So these two characters with ridiculous names, their names are Lovegurlo and Cassenda. That sounds like Henry Fielding. Lovegurlo is the male. Cassenda is the female. And there’s a particular passage in here where Cassinda is talking about all that she’ll do for him. She’ll mend his stockings. She’ll make his bed. She’ll wash his clothes. And he says, because in his mind, he’s imagining like a wife who’s so perfect that she wouldn’t sink to the level to do those things for him. And he says, you know, I just can’t imagine doing that. And then he says, besides, whenever my mistress plays me foul, I cast her like a dirty shirt away. And so he’s literally talking about the fact when you have a dirty shirt on, like, don’t imagine just like, oh, you wore it for a little bit and there’s a little bit of sweat in it. But like you’ve spilled food on it and the cuffs have trailed in there and the spaghetti sauce or something like that. So you’re taking the shirt off to put on new clean clothes. And it’s just really interesting to find it pops up here, it pops up there. And by our era, it’s still not that common, but it’s consistently used. And I always wonder, are these people going back to fielding to fetch this old expression? Or have they reinvented it for themselves?

I would lean toward the reinvention, just getting it off as quickly as possible.

Yeah, because we’ve got to imagine here. It’s not just like, oh, there’s a little bit of ink on the pocket or something, and it’s not yellowed at the collar. We’re talking a substantially dirty shirt.

That sounds about right. I mean, I always kind of knew, I guess the phrase made sense. You want to get it off quick or leave somewhere quickly, but I didn’t know it dated back that far. That’s crazy.

Yeah. I’d never heard any other grandparent or similarly aged person say a phrase like that, so I didn’t know if maybe it was something his parents said that was just passed down and he heard it somewhere.

It’s not that common. It did come up in Pretty in Pink, that 1986 movie. John Cryer’s character says it. It’s not common, but when it does pop up, it can be in prominent places. I think Stephen King has used it in one of his novels. It shows up in scripts here and there. So its surface is enough to keep kind of refreshing the number of people who know it and use it.

Oh, wow.

Well.

So there you go.

There you go.

Thanks very much for your call, Walter.

Yeah, no problem. Thank you guys for answering that for me.

Take care.

Bye.

Take care.

Well, you know, I’m hoping that all of our listeners are off like a herd of turtles. That’s another one we get a lot of questions about.

Is that fast?

That’s slow.

Well, it’s a joke. You know, I mean, I think all of these are just silly expressions, right? Off like a dirty shirt, off like a herd of turtles. Anyway, we hope you’re off like a herd of turtles to your phone to call us, 877-929-9673.