This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and we tell stories about just about everything.

And here to tell those stories is

Andrew Thompson author of Hair of the Dog to paint the town red the curious

origins of everyday sayings and fun phrases take it away Andrew to beat a hasty retreat

means to withdraw or leave quickly, and it has military origins.

It began from the battlefields of the 16th century when an army would have a marching band,

and there'd be a drummer who'd take orders from the commanding officer who he'd be stationed next to.

There was a series of orders that the troops knew and the drummer boy would beat them out

and then they would hear them and act accordingly. One of the drum beats was known as the

retreat and at sunset when the rules of engagement dictated that fighting would cease,

the soldiers would return to camp and the drummer would beat the retreat and the troops would

return. In cases where the battle wasn't going well

and the army was losing, the drummer would beat the retreat faster to indicate an urgency to

withdraw. To beat around the bush means to avoid coming to the point, and it's a phrase that

began in hunting in medieval times. Back then, wealthy nobleman

would hunt for pleasure, but they didn't want to put themselves at risk, so they'd employ men

to help them. The men's job was to flush out animals from within the brush so that the

nobleman could shoot them. Often the men were sent in to scare out the animals, but when there

were dangerous animals hiding, such as wild boar,

they would beat around the bush, hitting it with a stick to make a lot of noise,

in the hope that they would scare out the animals but not actually endanger themselves.

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