Mini Episode: On Thin Ice

 

In a mini episode this week, Shauna and Dan discuss the word "ice" and briefly look at two icy idioms; On Thin Ice and Break the Ice. 

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 Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast
Mini Ep: On Thin Ice
Mini Ep Record Date: October 14, 2024
Original Recording Date: October 3, 2021
Air Date: October 16, 2024

Dan:
Welcome to Bunny Trails, a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. I’m Dan Pugh.

Each week we take an idiom or other turn of phrase and try to tell the story from its entry into the English language, to how it’s used today.

We have a mini episode for you today while Shauna is out and I thought I would treat you to something that we did for our wonderful word nerd friends Aven and Mark over at the Endless Knot podcast.

Special shout out to our Patrons for making Bunny Trails possible. You can join Pat Rowe, Mary Halsig Lopez, and many more on our Patreon for free. And if you are financially able to support the show, we have great perks, too. Join us at patreon.com/bunnytrailspod

Now let me send you over to our Shauna and I from October 3, 2021 talking about the history of the word “ice” and two icy idioms.


Shauna:
Hello Word Nerds! I’m Shauna Harrison

Dan:
And I’m Dan Pugh

Shauna:
And we‘re the hosts of Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast

Dan:
It’s a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase

Shauna:
Every week, we take an idiom, or other turn of phrase, and try to tell the story from its entry into the English language, to how it’s used today.

Dan:
To help our friends Aven and Mark celebrate 100 episodes of The Endless Knot Podcast we want to bring you a little history on the word “ice” and some phrases that contain it.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary1, ice is
Quote
Frozen water; water made solid by cooling to a low temperature, either naturally (by weather or climate) or artificially (as by refrigeration)
End Quote

Ice comes to Old English from Germanic. As an aside, I find it interesting the middle english version of icicle is spelled isykle, because the “is” is from the Proto-Germanic for ice, while the “ykle” is from the Proto-Germanic2 for something like compact mass of ice. So the word icicle today might be described as an “icy ice clump”.

Shauna:
For the phrase, “to break the ice”, according to the Cambridge Dictionary3, means

Quote
To make people who have not met before feel more relaxed with each other
End quote


It joined the lexicon in the 1500s and seems to come from Erasmus4, who defined it in Latin, “scindere glaciem”, as meaning “to open the way and be the first to carry out a task.” Erasmus attributes the phrase to Italian humanist Franceso Filelfo5 whose work was posthumously published in the late 1400s and early 1500s6.

There isn’t much evidence to show where Franceso would have pulled it from, though we know some places were breaking ice on small waterways to facilitate passage in the late 1300s7, so it could be from a literal usage.


Dan:
Another phrase using ice is “on thin ice”, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary8 means,

Quote:
In a precarious or risky situation
End Quote

The literal usage of ice being thin has been around since at least the 1600s. But the figurative didn’t seem to arise until the mid 1800s, like this example from Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Prudence dated 18419,

Quote
Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.
End Quote

Or this one from Dartmouth out of Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, dated June 23, 187110

Quote
But dodging this point by the word possibility, he finds himself on thin ice and skates fast to the conclusion
End Quote

Emerson seems to get some credit for originating the phrase “on thin ice” as a figurative, and we can’t find any evidence that would disprove that. Regardless of its origins, Ralph Waldo Emerson definitely deserves credit for popularizing the phrase.

Shauna:
If you want to hear more of us, you can find Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast on Pandora, Audible, Gaana, Spotify, Goodpods, Shuffle… pretty much anywhere podcasts live. Or find us at our forever home, bunnytrailspod.com

Dan:
Thanks again for joining us everyone. We’ll talk to you again next week. Until then remember, words belong to their users.



Sources
1.https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/90765?rskey=3trwLm&result=3#eid
2.https://www.etymologynerd.com/blog/ice-ice
3.https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/break-the-ice
4.https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/90765?redirectedFrom=break+the+ice#eid1082651
5.https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/01/breaking-the-ice.html
6.https://crrs.ca/featured-book/frb1/
7.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12685-016-0152-3
8.https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/90765?redirectedFrom=on+thin+ice&#eid243123062
9.https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/prudence/
10. 1871  Dartmouth June 23 - by way of the OED https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/90765?redirectedFrom=on+thin+ice&#eid243123062