THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XLVII

Tad Tuleja

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

FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH

In China before the British invasions of the 19th century, the person of the Emperor was considered so sacred that his subjects could not even audibly refer to his physical being without incurring penalties. One of these penalties was the public penance known as "as tactless as a newborn baby." The person who was so rash as to imply that the Emperor had a corporeal as well as spiritual presence (perhaps by uttering some innocent comment about how well he looked that day) would be taken by armed guards to a central square, stripped of all his clothing except a diaper-like loin cloth, and have one of his feet yanked upward and forced into his mouth. There it would be tied for several hours as a lesson in civic education.

The British soldiers who witnessed this punishment in the 1850's probably did not understand its cruel logic. As the Chinese term for the practice makes clear, the intent of the penalty was to demonstrate the "true" - that is, infantile - nature of the offender by putting him into a physical position that usually only infants can achieve. The British did understand that it was the punishment for transgressing the Chinese laws governing conversation, and so they quite correctly brought the expression foot in one's mouth back to England as a metaphor for conversational blunders.