Bars of soap, comparisons to
Jan. 26th, 2014 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithI blame my sister for this. She asked about the origin of the expression "they wouldn't know me from a bar of soap". I had a look. I discovered it's origin isn't that simple.
It is apparently addressed in a 2009 edition of OzWords, a newsletter from the Australian National Dictionary Centre. In answer to a letter they say:
The international expression that you allude to—not to know a person from Adam— was first recorded in 1784. The variant not to know a person (or something) from a bar of soap appears first in New Zealand in 1903: "Didn't know the game [of golf] from a bar of soap." It is next used in Australia, in 1918: "Don’t know ’im from a bar of soap." Thereafter it is widely used in both Australia and New Zealand, as in this passage from Kylie Tennant’s 1943 novel Ride on Stranger: "'Why doesn't she marry the child's father?' ... 'It’s my belief she doesn't know him from a bar of soap.'"
It is unlikely that hygiene was the issue that gave rise to the idiom. In this age of soaps that come in so many shapes, forms, smells, and colours, it is easy to forget that in earlier days all bars of soap looked much the same. One member of the Dictionary Centre commented: "it alludes to the anonymous nature of rectangular (yellow) bars of soap, produced by the indistinguishable thousands on production lines in factories. The allusion works well because it’s such a common commodity."
But they're wrong about the earliest date. The date matters because you need that to get some idea of where and how a phrase originated. Anyway, a quick trawl through the newspapers in Trove gives an occurrence in 1900 in a Queensland newspaper:
That the sentries at the gates to the Exhibition-ground, Brisbane, have their time fully occupied in preventing people swarming in to lines.
That, recently, a sentry called a would-be visitor to halt, and inquired his business. That the reply was, "I wish to see Sergeant Brown."
That the volunteer-man, after due consideration, answered: "Don't know Sergeant Brown from a bar of soap! You get-back !"
That, considering that the sentry was a powerful man, standing 6ft. in his socks, the would-be visitor got--quickly!
A similar usage is found in a report on a court case in Hobart four years earlier (that's 1896):
Any man who understands horses, and knows a public nuisance from a bar of soap, will find it difficult to agree with the jury.
Then in back in 1878, in a Sydney newspaper, there is this curious version:
I have heard some very estimable people, generally of the missionary-parson type, speak with the greatest veneration of the literature and arts of the Chinese at a period when Europeans didn't know B from a bar of soap.
So datewise, it would seem to have a date of late 1890s, maybe derived from an earlier, slightly different expression. As to the meaning, the anonymous nature of bars of soap seems quite likely. There seems to be some use of "bar of soap" to mean "everything" in the same way as "the kitchen sink" is. I'm not putting references to that. You can find your own if you care :)
However, I also noticed I also came across the following paragraph a number of times in different newspapers from 1898 to 1901. I assume it was used as column filler. One example.
When one can hear the sweet notes of a mother's voice singing a lullaby to her baby, and observes how calming it is to him, however cross and fretful he may be, one can realise what there is in a human voice, and, though one may not know a bar of music from bar of soap, or a bank-note from a musical note, still, he can discern the difference between a harsh, abrupt, and discordant sound and one gentle, persuasive, and tender.
"Wouldn't know a note of music from a bar of soap" appears slightly earlier. This example is from NSW in 1896:
It would be fashionable, perhaps ; and a good many people who didn't know a note of music from a bar of soap would talk learnedly to you by the hour about adagios and scerzos and other wild and weird things.
Or Sydney, 1898:
The wretched residents of a Whitechapel slum, who hardly know a note of music from a bar of soap--being indeed for the main part totally unacquainted with either--would find themselves contributing perforce to the elevation of the musical standard
Now the writer of the lines about mother and baby probably altered the expression to make it more poetic (or not, see note below), or it might be taken from a book of some years previous, and the "note of music" is the later version. Certainly there is a tradition of comparing various things to a bar of soap that suddenly appeared in the 1890s. Usually these things are due to a line in a popular book or story, but then there is that earlier mention in regard to Chinese that suggest an earlier version of the comparison.
But anyway, wherever it came form, the meaning does seem tied to the commonplace nature of soap and not a reflection on whether the referred to person actually used it.
-------
Edited to add:
New Zealand papers give two results from 1895, which predate the Australian mentions (other than the Chinese one) and give a slightly earlier origin for the "bar of music" phrasing. From an account of robbery trial in May:
Stanton here stated that he did not know Treen "from a bar of soap."
And a story about a band from April:
While leaders of certain bands collect so much per man from the people that engage them they frequently ring in people in the band that don't know a bar of music from a bar of soap.
This is actually the earliest mention of the "bar of soap" comparison I've so far found, other than the 1878 one. Perhaps that is the origin of the phrase?
(This story originated in "Cleveland World", wherever that was published. Not Cleveland, Ohio going by the Library of Congress entry.)
-----------------
Also, from the Argus of 1848 comes:
Instead of admitting a parcel of fellows who--to use an old phrase--"do not know B from a bull's foot;" to seek, if necessary, persons who have had some experience.
It is apparently addressed in a 2009 edition of OzWords, a newsletter from the Australian National Dictionary Centre. In answer to a letter they say:
The international expression that you allude to—not to know a person from Adam— was first recorded in 1784. The variant not to know a person (or something) from a bar of soap appears first in New Zealand in 1903: "Didn't know the game [of golf] from a bar of soap." It is next used in Australia, in 1918: "Don’t know ’im from a bar of soap." Thereafter it is widely used in both Australia and New Zealand, as in this passage from Kylie Tennant’s 1943 novel Ride on Stranger: "'Why doesn't she marry the child's father?' ... 'It’s my belief she doesn't know him from a bar of soap.'"
It is unlikely that hygiene was the issue that gave rise to the idiom. In this age of soaps that come in so many shapes, forms, smells, and colours, it is easy to forget that in earlier days all bars of soap looked much the same. One member of the Dictionary Centre commented: "it alludes to the anonymous nature of rectangular (yellow) bars of soap, produced by the indistinguishable thousands on production lines in factories. The allusion works well because it’s such a common commodity."
But they're wrong about the earliest date. The date matters because you need that to get some idea of where and how a phrase originated. Anyway, a quick trawl through the newspapers in Trove gives an occurrence in 1900 in a Queensland newspaper:
That the sentries at the gates to the Exhibition-ground, Brisbane, have their time fully occupied in preventing people swarming in to lines.
That, recently, a sentry called a would-be visitor to halt, and inquired his business. That the reply was, "I wish to see Sergeant Brown."
That the volunteer-man, after due consideration, answered: "Don't know Sergeant Brown from a bar of soap! You get-back !"
That, considering that the sentry was a powerful man, standing 6ft. in his socks, the would-be visitor got--quickly!
A similar usage is found in a report on a court case in Hobart four years earlier (that's 1896):
Any man who understands horses, and knows a public nuisance from a bar of soap, will find it difficult to agree with the jury.
Then in back in 1878, in a Sydney newspaper, there is this curious version:
I have heard some very estimable people, generally of the missionary-parson type, speak with the greatest veneration of the literature and arts of the Chinese at a period when Europeans didn't know B from a bar of soap.
So datewise, it would seem to have a date of late 1890s, maybe derived from an earlier, slightly different expression. As to the meaning, the anonymous nature of bars of soap seems quite likely. There seems to be some use of "bar of soap" to mean "everything" in the same way as "the kitchen sink" is. I'm not putting references to that. You can find your own if you care :)
However, I also noticed I also came across the following paragraph a number of times in different newspapers from 1898 to 1901. I assume it was used as column filler. One example.
When one can hear the sweet notes of a mother's voice singing a lullaby to her baby, and observes how calming it is to him, however cross and fretful he may be, one can realise what there is in a human voice, and, though one may not know a bar of music from bar of soap, or a bank-note from a musical note, still, he can discern the difference between a harsh, abrupt, and discordant sound and one gentle, persuasive, and tender.
"Wouldn't know a note of music from a bar of soap" appears slightly earlier. This example is from NSW in 1896:
It would be fashionable, perhaps ; and a good many people who didn't know a note of music from a bar of soap would talk learnedly to you by the hour about adagios and scerzos and other wild and weird things.
Or Sydney, 1898:
The wretched residents of a Whitechapel slum, who hardly know a note of music from a bar of soap--being indeed for the main part totally unacquainted with either--would find themselves contributing perforce to the elevation of the musical standard
Now the writer of the lines about mother and baby probably altered the expression to make it more poetic (or not, see note below), or it might be taken from a book of some years previous, and the "note of music" is the later version. Certainly there is a tradition of comparing various things to a bar of soap that suddenly appeared in the 1890s. Usually these things are due to a line in a popular book or story, but then there is that earlier mention in regard to Chinese that suggest an earlier version of the comparison.
But anyway, wherever it came form, the meaning does seem tied to the commonplace nature of soap and not a reflection on whether the referred to person actually used it.
-------
Edited to add:
New Zealand papers give two results from 1895, which predate the Australian mentions (other than the Chinese one) and give a slightly earlier origin for the "bar of music" phrasing. From an account of robbery trial in May:
Stanton here stated that he did not know Treen "from a bar of soap."
And a story about a band from April:
While leaders of certain bands collect so much per man from the people that engage them they frequently ring in people in the band that don't know a bar of music from a bar of soap.
This is actually the earliest mention of the "bar of soap" comparison I've so far found, other than the 1878 one. Perhaps that is the origin of the phrase?
(This story originated in "Cleveland World", wherever that was published. Not Cleveland, Ohio going by the Library of Congress entry.)
-----------------
Also, from the Argus of 1848 comes:
Instead of admitting a parcel of fellows who--to use an old phrase--"do not know B from a bull's foot;" to seek, if necessary, persons who have had some experience.
