Chrysti The Wordsmith: House and Home

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. In William Shakespeare's 15 97 play Henry the Fourth part to the comic character Mistress Quickly complains about the gluttonous libertine Sir John Falstaff who takes advantage of the good woman by not only trifling with her affections but consuming much of the food in her larder as well Mistress Quickly says of Falstaff he hath eaten me out of house and home. He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his. Shakespeare's use of eatin me out of house and home shows that this now common expression is well over 400 years old to eat someone out of house and home of course is to ruinously strain the food budget and provisions of one's host. In some contexts we find the alternate expressions to run to drive to hunt or to cast out of house and home pairing the alliterative synonyms house and home in a single expression reinforces the notion of the entire contents of a domiciled or the whole of

one's property in fifteen twenty seven seventy years before the completion of Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth English theologian William Tyndale wrote to eat out of house and harbor with the harbor here referring not to a marine inlet but a shelter or place of lodging. For Montana State University in Bozeman. I'm Christie the wordsmith. Good day verb of course Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.