Tear the Rag Off the Bush

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Louie from Valrico, Florida. How are you today?

Great, how are you doing? Where in Florida is Valrico?

It’s just outside the east of Tampa.

Okay, very good. Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

How can we help?

Well, I had a question about something that I’ve heard, you know, for a good long time.

It’s an idiom, and it kind of denotes surprise or an exclamation.

And it goes like this.

Well, don’t that tear the rag off the bush?

And I think the first time I heard it was when an improper relationship was discovered somewhere in the community, and somebody remarked that about it.

But then 20, 30 years later, I heard it once again in a similar context, and I was just wondering where that idiom gets its origin.

So in both cases, it had to do with an improper relationship?

It did.

Being revealed or something?

Being revealed or discovered, yes.

Interesting.

Yeah, don’t that tear the rag off the bush or don’t that take the rag off the bush?

This is one of these expressions that we just can’t be completely sure about.

One of the most colorful stories I’ve heard about it is that maybe it has to do with shooting matches in the Old West.

You put a rag on the bush and then shoot at it, and whoever shoots it off the bush wins the prize.

But we don’t really know whether that’s a legitimate story or not. It also might be a variant of, don’t that take the cake or don’t that take the biscuit or something.

Well, that would make more sense in the context that I’ve heard it before, yeah.

And it’s got a couple hundred years worth of history, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

And what we do know about this term is that it’s not necessarily related to anything to do with sex or the sexy parts of the body or a woman’s time of the month or anything like that. So even though there might be some words there in common with that, it has nothing to do with that. I didn’t even go there.

I hadn’t crossed my mind either.

I’m just, you know, I muddle in slang. I wallow in the dark corners of language.

Well, don’t that take the rag off the bush, Grant. I was just trying to stop some email from coming in.

But yeah, it means it takes the cake or, well, don’t that beat all.

Something you’d say with surprise or astonishment, right?

So not necessarily a clandestine relationship or anything like that.

No, it could be anything that surprises me. It’s almost always something you’d say about something you’re observing rather than something you’re participating in.

That’s what I do notice. Good long entries for this, both in the Dictionary of American Regional English and the Oxford English Dictionary and in the much older English Dialect Dictionary.

Just a strong, great dialect term that occasionally surfaces in the best literature and among the mouths, or in the mouths of the best speakers.

But interesting that, Louie, that you didn’t hear it for another 20 years, huh?

Yeah, and the funny thing about it is I’ve only heard it here in the south.

I grew up in West Florida, and it didn’t seem odd to hear it there, but what really got my attention was hearing it down here in Tampa, which is more a cosmopolitan area.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, that is.

I don’t know if there’s a southern component to it.

One of the earliest uses that we can find in print is from Davy Crockett, so that tells you a little about it.

So when Martha says the Old West, she means the Old West.

When Ohio was actually the West.

The frontier, yeah.

Pre-Alamo.

Yeah, yeah, pre-Alamo, exactly.

Great term.

Don’t tear the rag off the bush.

It’s an expression of surprise.

Louie, how do we do?

Get everything you need?

I think so.

It does tell me that I’m, how shall we say this, unsettled by a discovery.

There we go.

There we go.

But it probably, you know, the shooting contest origin is not a bad idea, right?

The idea that you would tie a rag on a bush and then try to shoot it off, and if you could, you were a heck of a marksman.

Yeah.

True, true.

It’s an idiom that only has fit into one context for me, so you’ve helped me expand it a little bit more.

So I might start using it myself a little bit more frequently.

You’re hanging out with too many cheaters and womanizers.

We live close to the same main road.

Nice.

Louis, you’re a treat.

Thanks for calling.

Much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

All right, bye-bye.

Good talking to you.

Take care, Louis. Bye-bye.

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