A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases
HEM AND HAW
To hem and haw means to avoid making a point or commitment, to take a long time before making a decision about what to do. The phrase recalls the faithful wife of Odysseus, Penelope, who promised her suitors that she would answer their proposals as soon as she finished weaving a death shroud for her aging father-in-law, Laertes. To stall them until Odysseus' return from Troy, she undid every evening what she had woven that day. The suitors were dim enough to be fooled by this ruse for ten years, and even after they discovered it, they were put off a gain by a second stratagem. Penelope, having finished the garment, said she would decide among them once she had hemmed it. But again she tore out her handiwork each night. Homer called this process of dissimulation rapsimo zerbos, or "left-handed sewing," since Penelope would sew the hem from left to right and then rip it out from right to left. In George Chapman's famous translation of the Odyssey, the description became hem and haw; hem for obvious reasons, and haw because it was (and still is) the standard drover's term for urging a team to the left.
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