October 27, 2000

drop of a hat, at the

He's ready to fight at the drop of a hat. There seem to be many variations of this phrase. Where did it come from?

I notice that your query takes for granted the context of fighting, as do most of the written speculations about this phrase, but "it ain't necessarily so." If you're ready, willing, or able to do something--anything--at the drop of a hat, you'll do it without any delay. Of course if the setting is confrontational, you can still use the phrase to indicate that someone will fight at the slightest provocation.

The drop in at the drop of a hat carries the sense of 'an act or instance of dropping', and we presume that someone has let go of the hat deliberately. But as with most metaphors, the origin is a matter of opinion--several opinions. At least one source tentatively mentions Irish origins for this one, probably alluding to the stereotypical "fighting Irish," but most sources consider the phrase a mid-nineteenth-century colloquialism, born in the rough and ready American West, where it was intimately associated with altercations. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable supports this claim by saying that "The expression alludes to the American frontier practice of dropping a hat as a signal for a fight to begin, usually the only formality observed" (15th edition, 1995). One etymological article refers to a quote from M. Roberts' Western Avernus as the first known attestation: "Ready to quarrel 'at the drop of a hat', as the American saying goes" (1887). However, the OED lists an earlier citation, from 1854: "You said you'd marry me at the drop of a hat!" The existence of this earlier quote casts some doubt on the assumption that the saying must come from a formal signal for a fight to begin. And even if that is an accurate assumption, clearly its broader usefulness as a metaphor for immediate action was apparent from the beginning.

At the drop of a hat is still alive and healthy. At present it has no contextual restrictions. In fact, a search through a Nexis database of newspapers published during the last six months returned only five "hits" for ...fight at the drop of a hat and well over 500 for at the drop of a hat without a fight. The introductory contexts include "take a lie detector test, prove his innocence, hire a plane, be ready to play, be ready to change affiliations, change strategy," and "be ready to leave town," all at the drop of a hat.

The variations, then, are not in the core phrase itself, but in the part of the discourse that sets the stage for the hat to drop. Speaking of the stage, our phrase of the day achieved show-biz fame when At the Drop of a Hat, a musical review by (and starring) Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, opened in London in 1956, moved to New York in 1959, and played around the world for a total of ten years. By all accounts, it was wonderfully funny. If someone were to revive it, I, for one, would see it at the drop of a hat.

Enid