(WYTV) — In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt said he was running for president again. He told a reporter “My hat is in the ring.”
He was committed to running. Politicians still use it to say they’re candidates for some office.
It could also mean you’re joining a competition or contest.
Here’s where it came from: boxing.
In the early nineteenth century, boxers would hold their matches in a circular roped-off space or “ring.” It wasn’t square like it is today, it was round.
A boxer would actually throw his hat into the boxing ring — it meant he was ready to challenge someone to a boxing match.
Your stove, your washing machine — they’re on the fritz. It’s a common American expression meaning that some mechanism is malfunctioning or broken. You might also hear it’s on the blink — that’s more British
The expression first appeared in 1902. This may be the best theory: it may have come from someone named Fritz in a newspaper comic strip called The Katzenjammer Kids, first published in 1897.
In the comic, two youngsters named Hans and Fritz were always getting into trouble, fouling things up and putting everyone’s plans “on the Fritz.”
It’s finished, destroyed, gone for good. Why the word kaput?
It’s German, and we began to use it around World War I, but the Germans took it from a French word that sounds the same which meant losing big in a card game.
