try [ME] From Old French trier ‘to sift’, source also of trial [LME]. In rugby an act of touching the ball down behind the opposing goal line has been called a try since the 1840s. It got its name because a try gives the scoring side the right to try to kick a goal. The cliché try anything once, dates from the 1920s. The British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) is generally credited with ‘You should try everything once except incest and morris dancing’, but the composer Sir Arnold Bax reported a similar comment in a 1943 autobiography.