French-Canadian Word Question to All & Sundry:

A visitor emails this question, “Has anyone heard of ‘bingajohns’? The spelling is approximate. Apparently it's like fried bread. My family is Métis, originally from Québec.”

Whoever knows this word and its proper spelling and origin, please email me at canadiansayings@mountaincable.net

 

May 13, 2004

Subject: Eh?

Hi Bill:

 

How are you? I've been meaning to send a note about your web article on the reason Canadians say EH! My theory, which you blew all to hell!, was that we as Canadians can be lazy listeners eh!...... huh!... ya know what I mean... you listenin? Kind of along those lines.

I gave one of your books to a friend of mine. He is full of one liners so I expect to hear a few more new ones which I'll send along to you. Best of luck.

Sincerely,

Lance Haines

Nanaimo, BC

 

 

REVISIT MY ARTICLE ON "EH?"

 

 

Question

May 3, 2004

Good Day, Mr. Casselman

While being bored to tears watching a Toronto vs. Philadelphia hockey game, I saw a player make his third goal of the game. All of a sudden hundreds of hats were thrown on the ice. The announcers called this a "hat trick." Where did this expression originate?

I enjoy your site and your books.

Thank you

Elvira Brown
Dunnville, Ontario, Canada

Answer

The cricket term hat trick appeared first in British print in 1858. It refers to one player scoring three times in a row. In cricket jargon, one bowler takes three wickets with three balls in a row. That player was then permitted to pass around his hat and collect a few modest tributes to his finesse in the form of British pennies. So runs one story. Another says the cricket club bought the hat-tricking player a new hat. There is a Canadian elaboration of this origin below in paragraph four.

In baseball a pitcher might strike out three batters in a row, or a batter score three home runs in one game. Three goals in one soccer game is also a hat trick. But the British sporting term was borrowed and became most popular in North American hockey. If a player scores three successive goals in a row, that is perhaps hockey's most impressive hat trick. A hat trick may also consist of three goals scored by one player any time in one game, even if other players score goals between the hat-tricker's goals. Today fans often toss their hats onto the ice or into the air to celebrate the achievement, although the price of monogrammed tractor caps is making even this modest whoop-up problematical.

The most famous such triple scoring phenomenon in hockey happened last in March of 1952. The New York Rangers were playing a home game, the last of the hockey season, against the Chicago Blackhawks. Both teams had been eliminated from playoff possibility. So the game was not crucial, and this prompted the Ranger coach to put in a rookie goaltender guarding the New York posts. Blackhawk right-winger Bill Mosienko took superb advantage of the Rangers' neophyte net-minder. Mosienko slapped the puck into the net at six minutes and nine seconds of the third period. Then Mosienko scored again. 11 seconds later! While the shell-shocked Ranger goalie was composing his explanatory letter home to Dad, guess what? Mosienko put puck rubber on net rope again with a third goal ten seconds after the second goal. A hat trick indeed. 3 goals in 21 seconds!

Bill Mosienko 1921-1994

One Net Biography reads :

"Bill Mosienko was born on November 2, 1921, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He joined the Blackhawks in 1941 and was a member of the "Pony Line" along with the Bentley brothers, Max and Doug. Mosienko was rather small in stature at five-foot-eight and 150 pounds, but he could skate like the wind. In fact, he even won a speed skating contest among the fastest skaters in the NHL in 1950. His size earned him the nickname "Wee Willie" Mosienko. Along with his speed, Mosienko had amazing stickhandling ability.

That ability to handle the puck like a magician helped him to accomplish the feat that he is probably most famous for. On March 23, 1952, against the New York Rangers in the final game of the season, Mosienko set a record that still stands today and may never be broken. He scored 3 goals in the span of 21 seconds against Rangers goalie Lorne Anderson. Anderson never played another game in the NHL after that. The previous record for the fastest three goals was 1:04, set by Carl Liscombe of the Detroit Red Wings in 1938. Mosienko was also known as a gentlemanly player. He won the Lady Byng trophy in 1945 after going the entire season without a penalty. He was named to the all-star team in the 1944-45 and 1945-46 seasons. Mosienko played his entire career as a Blackhawk and he retired after the 1954-55 season."

Two Toronto origins are sometimes still presented in Canadian hockey histories. They are in fact only post-factum spin-offs. At Toronto's former temple of puckdom, Maple Leaf Gardens, anecdotal evidence says that a Toronto haberdasher presented a new hat to any player who scored three goals. It was also claimed that the Biltmore Hat Company, who sponsored the Guelph Biltmores of the Ontario Hockey League, began the free hat trick. There is no documentary evidence whatsoever supporting a Canadian origin of the term hat trick.

I'd like to thank my sports trivia guru and longtime pal, Jack Farr, for help in tracking down the hat trick origin.

BC

        

 

        April 29, 2004

        From: Y. L. Strasdine
        Gabriola Island, British Columbia

Dear Bill:

Do you know where the saying, 'Oh for the love of Mike' comes from? Someone I know remembers it as a child in Edmonton in the Thirties, where he thought it was related to Mike's Newsstand (The Sponsor of a Boys' Band in Edmonton for decades and the local bookie). I remember hearing it when I came to Canada in the Fifties in either Toronto or Vancouver.

Enjoy your books!
Cheers,
Y.L.S.

"For the love of Mike"

 

In word study this kind of phrase is called a minced oath.

To mince your words means 'to choose words so as not to offend anyone.'

This particular expression began as a substitute for an outcry of surprise or anger, namely, "for the love of God!" But the speaker decided that using God's name in this way was blasphemous and therefore decided to substitute something else for the word God.

In this case, St. Michael.

The phrase began as "for the love of Michael."

It was initially perhaps an Irish soldier's mild curse. St. Michael is the patron saint of warriors and soldiers and he looks after them on the battlefield. St. Michael the Archangel is the chief of the heavenly host, the celestial army that defends the Church. He fights the rebel angels and the dragon of Revelations. He is patron saint of knights and of all trades allied to the production of weapons and scales.

Indeed, the word archangel in its original Greek means literally 'chief' (Greek, arkhos) + 'angel' (Greek, aggelos literally 'messenger' of God). In later ecclesiastical Greek the two roots meld to form arkhaggelos 'angel of the highest order.'

Note that in the currently accepted transliteration of ancient Greek the digraph gg stands for a nasalized syllable, so that aggelos would be pronounced approximately like anglos with a hard g. In precise and fussy enunciation the e would be sounded too.

The expression "for the love of Mike" is not Canadian and is probably 600 to 800 years old!

Believe me, it did NOT originate at Mike the Bookie's Newsstand in Edmonton. I don't believe the newsstand would have been operating 600 years ago. That would make Mike one hell of an old bookie. I mean, Jeepers Creepers, Shakespeare himself could have been into Mike for a couple of Gs.

A few more examples of "minced oaths" will make clear the kind of linguistic substitution taking place here. "Jeepers Creepers!" is a minced version of "Jesus Christ!" Other minced versions of Jesus' name include "Jiminy Cricket!" Yes, the Walt Disney animators were drew the little character in Pinocchio, the cricket who sings "When You Wish upon a Star," were using a bit of an in-joke curse when they named the character. Or perhaps they were not aware of the origin of the character's name? They certainly did not invent it in the 1930s or 1940s since "Jiminy Cricket!" as a minced oath is in print in the United States by 1918.

Other kinds of minced oaths evolved too. In Shakespeare's time, if you smashed a hammer into your thumb, you might cry out, "God's wounds!." This could be minced as "Zounds!" That oath became quite popular among the Elizabethans and appears in several Shakespearean plays.

If anyone has other cogent origins of the phrase "for the love of Mike," please email them to me and I'll share them with visitors.

Thanks!

Bill Casselman

This view of the Archangel Michael in Italian High Renaissance pose depicts him subduing Satan in a 1518 painting by Raffaello Sanzi called Raphael  (1483-1520).

 

Here is a typical prayer to Saint Michael in his traditional role as defensor militis, 'protector of the soldier.'

 

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray. O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world for ruin of souls. Amen.