| 词汇 | on the wagon |
| 词源 | on the wagon. The original version of this expression, on the water wagon or water cart, which isn’t heard anymore, best explains the phrase. During the late 19th century, water carts drawn by horses wet down dusty roads in the summer. At the height of the Prohibition crusade in the 1890s men who vowed to stop drinking would say that they were thirsty indeed but would rather climb aboard the water cart to get a drink than break their pledges. From this sentiment came the expression I’m on the water cart, I’m trying to stop drinking, which is first recorded in, of all places, Alice Caldwell Rice’s Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901), where the consump- tive Mr. Dick says it to old Mrs. Wiggs. The more alliterative wagon soon replaced cart in the expression and it was eventu- ally shortened to on the wagon. Fall off the (water) wagon made its entry into the language almost immediately after its abstinent sister. |
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