Petered Out

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Nancy Gillis calling from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Well, hello, Nancy. Welcome to the program. What can we do for you today?

I am looking to find out where the expression Petered out came from. I know it’s not necessarily a common expression that people use anymore, but I’ve heard of it my whole life, and I started asking around when I was a teenager. You know, where did this come from? Is it something biblical, like from the Apostle Peter? Is it not referring to a person at all? And it’s not really common in today’s use, but I use it a lot. I tend to stick to the old expressions.

Do you? Yeah, I use it. Petered out? Isn’t that petered out?

Yeah, me too. Sometimes it seems like the only choice for me.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah. It was exhausted or it was extinguished. I know, petered out is just kind of more informal than those choices, right?

Yeah, Peter small p, right?

Yeah, Peter small p.

Yeah, Nancy, we don’t know for sure what the origin of it is, but we can pretty much rule out the Peter in terms of the biblical St. Peter. I don’t think there’s any connection.

Yeah, because that doesn’t make any sense.

Right.

A lot of the reference works will still include that old story. I just guess they haven’t been updated in a while, but it probably has nothing to do with St. Peter. The part where he lets Jesus down.

Yeah.

Yeah, but we really don’t have any evidence for that. Usually, the earliest examples we see of it tend to be associated with mining and a vein of ore petering out. And it’s an American term. It comes from mining in the American West.

If you use petered out in the other English-speaking countries of the world, they might recognize it, but they’re probably going to give you a cockeyed look. So it’s not completely widespread.

Yeah.

One theory, the strongest theory that we have about the origins of petered out, is perhaps it comes from the French word for to fart, F-A-R-T.

Oh, my goodness.

P-E-T-E-R. It’s spelled the same way. And it’s a very tenuous connection, but it’s pretty strong because the French, for many years, were very common in the American West, starting with the missionary days, frankly, and then the trapper days and so on and so forth. And even, you know, of course, the Louisiana Purchase, buying all that land from the French. And even where I come from, Missouri, there’s still plenty of streets and towns that carry French names anyway. So there’s a there’s a strong history of the French language in the United States.

It’s possible that it came from some euphemistic use of… of passing gas.

Passing gas, yeah.

Yeah, fizzling out, in other words.

Fizzling out, exactly right, yeah.

I mean, that might be a word that you substitute for, right?

Fizzle?

One little interesting note is that in the earliest forms that we find, it’s usually just to peter. So the vein petered. Not petered out, but just petered, meaning that was the end of it. And then peter out later became the more common form of it.

Yeah, and there’s another theory that maybe it has to do with salt peter, which was an ingredient in explosives, and they’re just…

Right, because you would put a hole in the wall, and you’d throw in some explosives, and then you’d blow up the wall of your mine, and you’d check the ore.

That actually makes a lot of sense, because then they would just blow things up, you know, trying to get at that source of ore.

Yeah.

And then eventually, there’s just no more. They’ve done as far as they can, and so now it’s now petered or petered out.

Exactly, yeah.

Thanks so much for answering my question. You have no idea how delighted I am to find the answer to this.

Well, we’re delighted to speak with you.

Thanks.

All right.

You guys have a great day.

Take care.

Keep warm.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Mining is another one of those things that gave all these words to American English, and sometimes we forget about their roots, right?

Yeah.

So something pans out, right?

Right, right, right.

Pay dirt.

Pay dirt.

Exactly.

Love it.

Love it.

Minero.

Chilean Mineros, right?

Oh, there we go.

Fantastic.

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