Katie in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wonders about the expression throw the book at, meaning to “try every means possible.” Did it originally involve literally throwing books? It’s just a metaphor in which the book refers to “the criminal code.” In the early 1900s, if someone got the book, they received the maximum sentence for a crime. So no, it doesn’t have to do with tossing books — although thwacking books has been used to relieve people of so-called Bible bumps. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Throw the Book at Someone”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Katie calling from Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Hi, Katie. How are you doing?
Well, I’ve been working at a vet clinic for a couple of years now.
And something that I’ve heard from many of the doctors, other physicians, is when we have a patient that’s either just not responding to our treatment or they’re just really, really sick, and we’ve been trying to do everything we can.
Some of the phrases that Dr. Williams says, you know, well, I’ve thrown the book at this dog and nothing is working.
So I’ve heard it in other places other than breastfed med.
I’ve heard it in human medicine.
I think I’ve heard it for like people getting their car fixed.
You know, I’ve thrown the book at it and your car is not working.
But I just kind of wondered where does that come from?
And, you know, hopefully there’s no background of people actually thinking you could throw a book at something and it’s osmotically absorbing by the knowledge that’s inside.
Hopefully that’s not it.
So you have this mental picture of somebody literally throwing a book.
Yeah.
Good thing that’s not the case.
No, but you know, people would put, you know, they used to put Bibles on people exercising them, you know, so you never really know that people might find that books have a power beyond what we might actually know.
It’s true.
They are cultural forces.
That’s right.
And sometimes if somebody has a little protuberance on their hand, they call that a Bible bump because you would put a Bible on top of it to kind of weigh it down and make it go back down.
I thought you smacked it with the Bible.
No, no, no.
Wow, I didn’t know that.
Oh, my gosh.
I mean, we do smack it.
I know we’ve talked about that before.
Martha, let’s go back to the veterinarian stuff.
Why are people throwing books at animals or not?
They’re not.
They’re not throwing books at animals. Thank goodness.
No, the expression to throw the book at is pretty straightforward if you know that it comes from the world of criminal slang.
The book in this case is the criminal code, you know, the law books that contain all the possible crimes that you can be charged with and all the possible punishments.
And so back in the early 1900s, if you got the book in prison slang, that meant that you got the maximum sentence.
You know, you got the worst.
You got the book.
You got charged with everything.
And so the expression then, by extension, came to mean, you know, using every possible resource, every possible strategy or solution to tackle that problem.
So in the case of the vet, they might be doing diet and this drug or that drug or maybe a little surgery.
They’re throwing the book, meaning that they’re trying every single thing they can think of.
And I kind of thought, you know, throwing the book at someone is as well as like throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, you know, the people use the cook.
Yeah, kind of.
It’s metaphorical in that same way.
Exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay. Well, I’m a little relieved to know that it didn’t come from some medieval practice of like hitting people with books.
Give some of those animals a little squeeze for us, will you?
Oh, absolutely. Will do.
All right. Take care of yourself.
You too. Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
Bye.
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