Words and Their Stories: Bag Expressions

22 May 2011

Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

Different people have different ways of saying things – their own special expressions. Each week we tell about some popular American expressions.

The bag is one of the most simple and useful things in the world. It is a container made of paper or cloth. It has given the world many strange expressions that are not very simple. Some of them are used in the United States today.

One is

bagman

. It describes a go-between. The go-between sees to it that money is passed – often illegally – from one person to another.

Another widely-used expression is

to let the cat out of the bag

. It is used when someone tells something that was supposed to be secret. No one can explain how the cat got into the bag. But there is an old story about it.

Long ago tradesmen sold things in large cloth bags. One day a woman asked for a pig. The tradesman held up a cloth bag with something moving inside it. He said it was a live pig. The woman asked to see it. When the dishonest tradesman opened the bag, out jumped a cat – not a pig. The tradesman’s secret was out. He was trying to trick her. And now everybody knew it.

The phrase

to be left holding the bag

is as widely used as the expression to let the cat out of the bag.

This expression makes the person left holding the bag responsible for an action, often a crime or misdeed. That person is the one who is punished. The others involve in the act escape.