Every Tom, Dick, and Jeffords
Friday, May 24, 2002
- TITLE: "Every Tom, Dick and Jeffords" A take on the phrase, "Every Tom, Dick, and Harry." I tried to find the etymology for "Tom, Dick, and Harry," but couldn't locate one last night.
An update, courtesy of Mullster John Holliday:
TOM, DICK AND HARRY � "This group of names signifying any indiscriminate collection of masculine representatives of
�hoi polloi� was a more or less haphazard choice. It probably started with names common in the sixteenth century. Thus
Sir David Lyndesay, in �Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour� (c. 1555), has �Wherefore to colliers,
carters and cokes to Iack (Jack) and Tom my rime shall be directed.� And Shakespeare, in �Love�s Labour�s Lost�
(1588), gives us in the closing song, �And Dicke the Shepheard blowes his nails� and Tom beares Logges into the
hall.� And �Dick, Tom and Jack� served through the seventeenth century. But our present group was apparently an
American selection. It appeared (according to George L. Kittredge�s �The Old Farmer and his Almanac,� 1904) in
'The Farmer�s Almanack' for 1815: �So he hired Tom, Dick and Harry, and at it they went.�"
- From "Heavens to Betsy" by Charles Earle Funk (Harper & Row, New York, 1955).
- "... Star Wars ..." Here is the Mullings Movie Review of the new Star Wars movie.
- "... Pew Research ..." Here is a link to the Pew Research poll on the way Democrats view their leaders in Congress.
Soviet WW II Poster
A translation states: Hurrah for
the Red Army. We Made it! [to Berlin]
- Mullings' Catchy Caption of the Day:
U2's Bono and U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, in
Ghana, celebrate their agreement to embark on their
long-anticipated "Elton John Dress-Alike" tour.
(Photo: AP /Saurabh Das)
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