Satirical or Idiotic

[00:00] So this is the one that I've been worried about for most of my life.
[00:05] It's a phrase that I've used often.
[00:07] It's a phrase that I hear often.
[00:09] And I just, because of the under Googables, I start thinking about these phrases harder than I used to.
[00:18] Oh, we do under Googables.
[00:30] That was the play of Super Excited.
[00:33] I told us we had to.
[00:35] He said we signed up for it.
[00:38] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:43] Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
[00:50] I always envision this phrase as get your shit together, pull your boots on tighter, and get on and do your job.
[00:59] But that's not what the phrase says.
[01:01] I don't know what a bootstrap is, and I need your all's help.
[01:05] So I think the bootstrap refers to the thing on the back of the boot that you would use to pull it up onto your foot.
[01:14] The little tongue thing?
[01:17] I was just thinking shoelaces.
[01:20] Okay, yeah.
[01:22] Could be that too.
[01:25] But my understanding of this phrase is that it was originally a satirical take on people that expected the lower class to fend for themselves.
[01:41] How could we expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
[01:44] And then it got trans—or what is the word?
[01:49] When you adopt it into its opposite meaning, basically, that people were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:56] Poor people can pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
[01:59] Yeah, let's do it.
[02:01] I was thinking it's cynical.
[02:03] Now, you're saying originally you think it was satirical.
[02:06] Yes, that's what my understanding of it was.
[02:10] I also thought—I would have guessed it just came straight up from Horatio Alger and was not said that it was not originally satirical, but maybe it should have been.
[02:27] So you think it was earnestly the way it was originally?
[02:31] Originally, yeah.
[02:33] But I think from my understanding, the idea is supposed to be so ridiculous that it's funny.
[02:44] Sure. That makes sense.
[02:46] But I mean, I just don't feel like the phrase is used in humor nowadays.
[02:53] It's not anymore. That's what I'm saying.
[02:55] Why don't these people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get to work and get their job done?
[02:59] Right. That's what I'm saying, is it's been transmogrified or whatever. That's not the right word.
[03:04] It's magnified.
[03:06] Transmogrified.
[03:08] But I think that's something else.
[03:14] Yeah, it's something else.
[03:16] Combining words.
[03:18] So I mean, I think in either case, we're pre-Horatio Alger.
[03:26] So what are we thinking here for timeline?
[03:29] Well, but I mean, but I guess I don't even know again.
[03:32] So you're saying shoestrings and you're saying that little piece of leather on the back of the boot.
[03:41] Well, shoelaces are a modern invention, right?
[03:44] There was something perhaps on the front of the boot prior, which you would use to strap them on, right?
[03:51] OK, so you're saying does that give us a timeline then?
[03:55] So whatever is pre shoelace.
[03:58] I mean, shoelaces have been around forever.
[04:00] They were leather laces in moccasins, for crying out loud, right?
[04:10] Is that a strap?
[04:15] Kind of, yeah, I guess.
[04:17] And how do you pull yourself up by it?
[04:22] Well, if indeed it was meant to be satirical, that's the point.
[04:26] That's the whole point.
[04:27] Well, yeah.
[04:28] So, OK.
[04:29] That goes back to the point then.
[04:30] It was satirical.
[04:31] There's no way you can pull yourself up from your boot.
[04:35] I mean, it was either satirical or idiotic either way.
[04:38] You get to the same place.
[04:40] That is true.
[04:43] Yeah, I think I want to say it came out in like depression era.
[04:48] That would be my guess.
[04:50] So I'm less familiar with Horatio Alger than I should be.
[04:53] Can you give me a mini history lesson on this?
[04:57] Yeah, so I think he was actually, you know, I thought he was earlier than that,
[05:01] like closer to the Gilded Age and stuff.
[05:03] But, you know, just a famous author with lots of, you know,
[05:06] feel-good stories about people rising up through the easily accessible social
[05:10] mobility of, you know, the American capitalist society.
[05:14] Yes.
[05:15] So many great stories.
[05:17] So many great stories.
[05:19] That makes me wonder if it's also European.
[05:24] I mean, you know, go back further, right?
[05:27] Could this be like a Jonathan Swift, you know,
[05:37] or Voltaire or something?
[05:40] I mean, I don't know.
[05:41] Like, are there people that are making fun of the Gilded
[05:49] class earlier than America?
[05:56] Certainly there were.
[05:59] There definitely were.
[06:00] I'm just saying, like, were they doing it for this phrase, I guess.
[06:03] Yeah.
[06:04] Yeah.
[06:05] I mean, I guess the question, is it an American phrase or is it a?
[06:08] Boots are like older than shoes, right?
[06:11] Boots are, I mean, I don't know.
[06:14] Yeah.
[06:15] I mean, boots is a term that is used across the pond as well.
[06:23] Yeah.
[06:24] To refer to shoes.
[06:25] And trucks.
[06:26] Yeah.
[06:27] Yeah.
[06:28] And chunks of cars.
[06:29] That's right.
[06:30] You got your boots in your boot.
[06:31] Ooh.
[06:32] Ooh.
[06:33] Okay.
[06:34] Is there a trunk strap?
[06:35] No, it doesn't have to do with the trunks.
[06:36] Okay.
[06:37] It also doesn't have to do with getting the sack.
[06:42] Okay.
[06:43] Okay.
[06:44] Okay.
[06:45] Get the boot.
[06:46] Get the boot.
[06:47] All right.
[06:49] So what are we going with?
[06:51] I'm going with 1750s England.
[07:00] I will go with turn of the century America.
[07:03] Okay.
[07:04] And I'm going depression around America.
[07:06] Okay.
[07:07] So you're going most recent.
[07:08] Yeah.
[07:09] Okay.
[07:10] Well, my new favorite site is called useless etymology.com.
[07:15] Yeah.
[07:17] Yeah.
[07:18] It looks like a bootstrap is like Jason said, the thingy on the back originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century.
[07:26] It's attributed to a late 1800s physics school book that contained the example question why cannot a man lift himself up by pulling up on his bootstraps.
[07:36] So when it became a colloquial phrase referring to socioeconomic advancement shortly thereafter, it was meant to be sarcastic.
[07:43] Okay.
[07:44] Or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.
[07:46] Eventually, however, the phrase is common accepted meaning evolved.
[07:49] And now when we tell people to pull pull themselves up by the bootstraps, it's implying the socioeconomic advancement is something that ever should be able to do, albeit something difficult.
[07:57] So I'm going to stop looking and just say we nailed it.
[08:02] Yeah.
[08:03] So I think because we talked about all of those things.
[08:09] So I'm reading on Zapier.com that was originally used to refer to a test that's impossible.
[08:16] It's believed to come from the German author Rudolf Erich Raspi, who wrote about a character who pulled himself out of a swamp by pulling his own hair.
[08:31] But that seems completely different.
[08:35] James Joyce in 1922.
[08:38] There were others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps.
[08:45] Also, bootstraps weren't popularized until 1870.
[08:52] So the character of Bootstrap Bill in Pirates of the Caribbean isn't anachronism.
[08:58] Oh, there you go.
[09:00] Additionally, again, according to useless etymology, which I'm finding very useful indeed.
[09:06] This idiom is also the source of booting a computer as well as the mathematical bootstrap method.
[09:12] Interesting.
[09:15] And Horatio Algers apparently most notable work was Ragged Dick.
[09:20] So that's the name of a band at high school.
[09:32] That will be the name of your band at the old folks.
[09:37] My current nickname with the ladies.
[09:42] Let's see. We've got from Kunitz and Haycraft's British authors of the 19th century.
[09:49] They've quoted a poet who lifted himself by his own bootstraps from obscure versifier to the ranks of poetry.
[09:59] So then that's 1800s in England.
[10:04] Oh, that's very interesting.
[10:06] So that would make all that other stuff completely false, then.
[10:10] Interesting.
[10:11] Okay, so now I feel like I have to dig more. Thanks, Coalson.
[10:14] Sorry.
[10:15] So what I'm seeing here on Huff Post actually is that the expression dates back to the story Baron Munchausen, a fictional 18th century German nobleman who was famous for telling tales about his sensational achievements as a soldier and world traveler.
[10:36] In one such tale, he manages to launch himself up out of a swamp by pulling on his own hair.
[10:41] Okay. Supposedly, an American version of the story has Baron Munchausen using his bootstraps to pull himself out, although the person that was researching this didn't find any evidence of that.
[10:53] But we know it's true.
[10:56] Supposedly, that's what people say.
[10:58] Well, so that would be different than the way that the phrase is currently used, right?
[11:04] That's just as a physical feat of something, right?
[11:10] Whereas the 1850s poet guy is using it in exactly that idiomatic sense of elevating himself to poetic ranks. It's easy to metaphorically.
[11:22] Oh, right. Okay.
[11:26] Let's see, New York Times. I don't pay for this, so I only get the opening paragraph.
[11:32] In the 1800s, the expression, pull yourself up by the bootstraps meant the opposite of what it does today.
[11:38] It was used mockingly to describe an impossible act.
[11:42] But that's all I—
[11:45] Have we found any other mention of this 1850s?
[11:51] I mean, it's strange that someone would find this reference, it'd pop up in the 1850s, disappear for 50 years, and then enter the American lexicon.
[11:59] Well, yeah, you're right, 50 years.
[12:01] James Joyce doesn't show up until 22, and then it becomes—yeah, you're right.
[12:06] And the American seems to be slightly different.
[12:09] I mean, I suppose if you believe the story of the guy who's not pulling himself out by his hair, but his bootstraps.
[12:16] And again, what the hell is a bootstrap?
[12:18] It's the thing on the back of your boot.
[12:20] We saw that. It's the thing on the back.
[12:22] It's the tongue on the back. Okay. All right.
[12:24] But that wasn't popularized until 1870.
[12:28] Someone would be using that before that.
[12:31] Yeah.
[12:32] And, you know, maybe—I mean, that's one of those widely popular, you know, but it seems strange that it would have been in use before that, if the other date is correct.
[12:45] I guess we kind of nailed the broad date, and we figured out that it was satirical.
[12:54] I think we nailed it, and there's a historically questionable outlier.
[12:59] Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you.
[13:02] I guess I was wrong. I thought it came about much later.
[13:07] I mean, much later being 20 years. We're going to give you crap.
[13:11] Well, okay.
[13:13] Booker T. Washington was railing against the pull yourself out bootstraps.
[13:20] Yeah, he gave a speech in like 1899 or something.
[13:23] Yeah, 1895. Yeah, so that means it's in the parlance by then. Okay.
[13:29] All right. Fair enough.
[13:31] Turn to the set tree.
[13:32] Yep. There you go. Nicely done, team.
[13:36] Once again, just solving problems.