Grammar Girl here. I'm Injan Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about election words and phrases, and then we'll look at the difference between homing and honing.

It's the time of year in the United States when campaigns are wrapping up and we finally cast

our ballots. So today, we're going to look at the words and phrases we use to talk about elections.

Let's start at the boxing ring. In the early 1800s, there's no formal registration process

for fighters. If you want to signal a challenge, you literally

throw your hat into a ring, showing that you're ready to fight. That's where the phrase we now

use for elections comes from. Throw your hat in the ring. The boxing ring. The phrase appeared in print

by 1820 when poet John Hamilton Reynolds wrote about a boxer who would, quote,

Throw in his hat and with a spring get gallantly within the ring, unquote.

But it wasn't until 1912 that Theodore Roosevelt popularized the term's political meaning.

When a reporter asked him about his plans to challenge

President William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination, and Roosevelt declared,

My Hat is in the Ring. The phrase caught fire, and soon his campaign was selling pins and

bandanas featuring Roosevelt's distinctive slouch hat surrounded by a ring.

And the metaphor makes sense.

Being a political candidate can be a tough fight, like stepping into a verbal or emotional boxing ring.

And what about that word candidate?

Well, in ancient Rome, if you wanted to run for public office, you didn't just announce your

candidacy. You wore it. The word candidate comes from the Latin, candidatos, which literally means

clothed in white. Roman men seeking election would wear a toga candida that was brightened

with chalk to make it extra white.

According to Edomonline, this gleaming toga symbolized the purity of a person's intentions in

...