![]() Logophile Charles Harrington Elster argues instead in “The Accidents of Style” that the headliner’s name would be printed in such large type that it would take up most of the poster – it would literally “fill the bill.”Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: According to Paul Brians, author of “Common Errors in English Usage,” 19th-century theater managers would book a headliner and then “fill the bill” with lesser-known acts. ![]() Though everyone seems to agree that both versions of the idiom mean “to be suitable for a particular purpose,” language mavens disagree about which is “correct,” and how, exactly, they originated. Theatrical posters are at issue in “filling” and “fitting” the bill. The person was sold the list rather than the actual items – the “goods” they were expecting. In the 19th century, footing the bill came to mean taking financial responsibility, especially when the expense was incurred by someone else.Ī bill of goods is simply “an itemized receipt” – but today it’s most frequently encountered in an idiom that means “to deceive, to swindle.” To sell someone a bill of goods originated in the 1920s and describes a situation in which a person pays for items listed on an invoice sight unseen, and then receives either inferior versions or nothing at all. Adding those amounts up was called footing (still a part of accounting lingo today) since the sum was then printed on the bottom, or “foot” of the bill. It appeared in English in the 13th century as bull, used exclusively for papal announcements, and in the 14th century as bill, which included a wider range of documents, from personal letters to draft acts of Parliament to (by 1480) invoices that listed the price of each good or service individually. ![]() By extension, bulla came to refer to the official documents secured by such seals. The word bill derives from bulla, which in medieval Latin referred to a seal on a document, such as wax stamped by a signet ring. ![]() English has lots of bill idioms, but the bills involved are not the same. Or does it fill the bill? Someone has to foot the bill for the not-inexpensive adventure if it turns out that only one ski lift was open instead of the 10 promised, that person might complain that they were sold a bill of goods. After a long day of downhill skiing, a mug of hot chocolate fits the bill. ![]()
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