(~7 minutes to read)

There are lots of idioms we use without thinking. We learn them in our youth, don’t question them all our lives, and rely on them for something to say in our dotage. Most of the time, we know when to use a phrase, and maybe have some clue about how it may have come about, but once in a while, a phrase comes up that we use… just because.

Here are two examples.

• “The whole kit and caboodle”. Hands up who knows what a caboodle is off the top of their heads.
• “The Real McCoy”. Who or what is (a) McCoy? And why is it so important to be (or have) the real one?

Some idioms contain unfamiliar words, and we assume that their strangeness derives from their antiquity, but most of us can’t be bothered to reach for a dictionary and learn about the unfamiliar word.

Other idioms are just… well… weird.

Take “getting out of the wrong side of the bed” for example. Which is the “wrong side”? The left (sinister) side—and viewed from which direction or position? The side where the chamber pot was located? An attempt to get out of bed that resulted in hitting the wall?

Another one is “by the skin of my teeth”. Teeth don’t have skin, unless you count the gums that conceal their root ends. So where did this come from? (Yes, there are theories out there, some more credible than others.)

Once Upon a TIme…

“Once upon a time” is a third example. It’s possibly the first idiomatic phrase we learn. It contains words we’re very familiar with—every one of them is still in everyday use—yet the phrase itself doesn’t bear much thinking about in terms of making sense.

According to my “older-than-Kelvin” Oxford Dictionary, the phrase goes back to late Middle English. Michael Quinion over at World Wide Words is more precise; he informs us that it goes back as far as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 1385. A quick dip into The Knight’s Tale in Middle and Modern English reveals the word to be “whilom”, which is interpreted in Chaucer-focused glossaries as “sometimes”, “at times”, “once” or “formerly”. Surprisingly, the word appears in all the dictionaries I checked (old and new, online and hardcopy). My older-than-Kelvin dictionary defines it as “at times”, “at some past time”, and “once upon a time”. “Whilom” is pronounced along the same lines as “while”.

In one online translation of The Knight’s Tale, the word is translated as “Once on a time” and “was of old time”. In a much freer translation on my bookshelf (translated by Prof. Neville Coghill), the word is represented by “of old” and “once”.

None of which yet explains to me how we got to “once upon a time”. So another item gets added to my bucket list; to learn enough about Old English and Middle English to be able to understand how scholars can state things like “Once upon a time” goes back to The Canterbury Tales.

It Doesn’t Make Sense

So… how to make sense of “Once upon a time”? Why has the idiom stuck around for so long?

In my opening paragraph, I used the phrase “once in a while”. We all understand that phrase—something occurs one time only within a period of indefinite length. It’s imprecise, and intentionally so. “Kelvin buys beer for his friends once in a while”—the period between beverage purchases for my buddies is indefinite—elastic—it could be weeks or it could be years. (It’s actually decades.)

What if we applied that same analysis to “Once upon a time”? “Something happened one time only, upon a time”. Hmmm—questions remain: what time or kind of time? Noon? Opening time? Prehistoric time? Clearly we have to make a decision about which meaning of “time” to use.

It seems likely that “era” or “point in history” is the best fit. “Once upon a time, Kelvin bought his buddies a beer.” Obviously a fairy tale, but although we all understand the statement (and my friends understand its implications), the idiom is still being used blindly. With that “upon” there, it still doesn’t make sense.

Back to my older-than-Kelvin dictionary. It states that the choice of “on” or “upon” can be made on the basis of rhythm or emphasis; I infer from this that there was no formality/informality associated with the choice of word in 1944.

Michael Quinion quotes from Westward Ho! by way of explanation for “upon” (or “on”) being used: “And it befell upon a day, that we came into a great wood of ferns.” He also quotes from a 1535 translation of the Old Testament: “Now upon a time…”

These days (aka in modern times), when talking about a time gone by, we usually use “in” rather than “on”; for example, “in Biblical times”. However, there is no two-syllable equivalent of “upon” for “in”.

Which brings me back to my dictionary’s assertion that the choice of “on” and “upon” can be made on the basis of rhythm. “Once in a time” just doesn’t have a decent rhythmic flow; it doesn’t have enough momentum to get a story going.

Or does it?

Statistics Prove Otherwise

(Actually, statistics can prove anything in the right hands, or so I’m led to believe.)

Sparing no effort for my readers, I sat and recorded the opening words of each of the 210 stories and legends in a nineteenth-century translation of the Brothers Grimm’s Kinder-und Hausmärchen. Here are the top story beginnings.

There was once / There were once    54

Once on a time / There was once on a time    32

Once upon a time / There was once upon a time / There were once upon a time    21

Only eight stories actually started with the exact words “Once upon a time”.

Curiously, the original German versions start with “Es war einmal”, whether the English translation is “Once there was”, “Once upon a time” or “There was once on a time”.

These statistics prove beyond all reasonable doubt absolutely nothing, but here are some sketchy inferences that I’ve made.

• Assuming the analyzed stories to be a representative sample, only ten percent of fairy tales open with “Once upon a time”.
• This particular translation of the Brothers Grimm’s works is not the reason that “Once upon a time” has become ubiquitous.
• The choice between “Once on a time” and “Once upon a time” is entirely the translator’s. (Do they pick one then another for variety, for rhythm, or to confuse uneducated people like me?)
• There is something wrong with my assertion that “once in a time” (or “once on a time”) doesn’t cut the mustard for getting a story’s engine running.

That last inference notwithstanding, I still believe that rhythm is what has raised the idiom to pre-eminence. Perhaps the translator whose work I analyzed wasn’t interested in rhythm.

Speaking of Statistics

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows that “Once upon a time” started surging in popularity in the early 1800s, with “Once on a time” trying unsuccessfully to play catch-up in the second half of that century. By 1900 “Once on a time” was in decline, while “Once upon a time” continued to climb until the 1930s at which time it started a steep decline as a percentage of Google’s English corpus. However, it still remained many times more popular than “Once on a time”, and in 2008 was still more than ten times as common in the English corpus.

Both phrases have increased their percentage of the English corpus since 2000, perhaps reflecting political commentary about the credibility of GWB’s speeches.

Taking a Leaf Out of George Lucas’s Book

Nobody seems to have come up with an alternative yet that’s caught on in a big way. The nearest I can think of is the Star Wars opening text: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Could Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm learn from Star Wars? Probably not, for a few reasons. First and foremost, they’re long gone. (Insert excerpt from Dead Parrot sketch here). Secondly, their tales weren’t written in English; Andersen was a Dane, and the Grimms German. Thirdly, contrary to popular belief, many of their tales start with other than “Once upon a time”. Lastly, and most importantly, starting Little Red Riding Hood or The Little Mermaid with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” really doesn’t set the scene very well.

Conclusion

Idioms are meant to be weird; they really don’t bear much thinking about. But they do inject a further layer of challenge into learning English as a foreign language—without them, learning English would be a breeze—a piece of cake—a walk in the park, wouldn’t it!

We’re so used to “Once upon a time” that there’s no need to update it. We haven’t updated “whole kit and caboodle” (what would we update it to) so let’s leave “Once upon a time” alone and trust that it will live happily ever after.

Your Turn

What’s your favourite idiom? Do you have any stories about idioms causing mirth through being used inappropriately? Leave a comment to share.