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This column studies the history of words and phrases, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time

Back and fill: Vacillate, be undecided

Origin: In the days of large scale commercial sailing, when ships had to work their way up and down river channels to get to and from ports, a technique of navigation was used.

The sail was hauled back against the wind and braced so that the tide or current carries the ship forward against the wind. Then the sail must be swung around and filled, to keep the ship on course. The ship was thus kept away from t hoe obstacles. The term's figurative use for indecisiveness dates from the mid-1800s.

Back to square one : Back to the beginning, to start again.

Origin: There are three suggestions but there's no real evidence to put the origin beyond reasonable doubt, and so it remains uncertain.

BBC Commentaries: In order that listeners could follow the progress of football games in radio commentaries, the pitch was divided into eight notional squares. Commentators described the play by saying which square the ball was in. The Radio Times - BBC's listings guide - referred to the practice in an issue from January 1927. Commentators referred listeners to the printed maps and a second commentator called out the numbers as the ball moved from square to square.

Board Games: The phrase refers to Snakes and Ladders or similar board games. The earliest citation of the phrase in print is currently 1952, from the Economic Journal - "He has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders."

Hopscotch: This playground game is played on a grid of numbered squares. The rules of the game usually involve players hopping from square to square, missing out the square containing their thrown stone. They go from one to (usually) eight or ten and then back to square one.

Back to the drawing board: Start again on a new design - after a failure of an earlier attempt.

Origin: This term is been used since WWII as a jocular acceptance that a design has failed and that a new one is needed. It gained common currency quite quickly and began appearing in US newspapers by 1947. The phrase originated as the caption to a cartoon produced by Peter Arno, for the New Yorker magazine, in 1941.

The cartoon shows various military men and ground crew racing toward a crashed plane, and a designer, with a roll of plans under his arm, walking away saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board". A drawing board is, of course, an architect's or draughtsman's table, used for the preparation of designs or blueprints.

 

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