THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XLIX

Tad Tuleja

 

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

 

SHOOTING THE BREEZE

 

15th century French cheese makers were bound to no quality control, and as a result substandard cheeses - even in some cases tainted cheeses - were constantly being foisted on the public. In 1487, the crown issued an edict calling for the punishment of fromageurs who could be proven to have adulterated or insufficiently aged their wares. This edict, in a roundabout way, gave rise to the expression shooting the breeze.

 

What happened was that in 1490 a Norman cheesemaker named Gaston Cartier was arrested for selling faux Brie, or Brie cheese that had been adulterated with warm milk. He claimed he had nothing to do with it and that the Devil had intervened and the cheese had tainted itself. The French district court accepted this defense and condemned the cheese itself to pay the price. The remainder of M. Cartier's self-tainted Brie stock was carried into a pasture under the guard of four musketeers, placed on a wagon bed, and shot at with blunderbusses until it was a mass of lactic slush. The local villagers spoke of this event as the "Grand Tirer de la Brie," or the "Great Shooting of the Brie." This expression, corrupted into shooting the breeze by English vacationers, soon became a synonym for any pointless or inconsequential action.