THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XXIV

Tad Tuleja

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

PASS THE BUCK

When Egypt was  under the colonial administration of Great Britain, many village leaders, resisting the blandishments of Anglo-Saxon law, held to traditional forms of adjudication. Among them was the settling of disputes by means of round-table discussion and consensus. At these "court" gatherings, parliamentary procedure had no place. When someone wished to address the assembly, he asked to be handed a small, carved scarab - an ancient Egyptian emblem of the sun's divinity. With the scarab in front of him, he was bound to speak nothing but the truth, and he had the floor until he wished to relinquish it. He did that by moving the beetle-shaped symbol of "true words" in front of the next speaker who wanted it. It was this transfer of veracity that English observers contemptuously called "passing the bug". Eventually, in America, the original bug became buck, and passing it came to be an image not just for relinquishing the right to speak, but for actively avoiding responsibility.