As Right as Rain by Caroline Taggart

Author:Caroline Taggart [Taggart, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782430933
Publisher: Michael O'Mara

To have a frog in one’s throat

Frogs are croaky; if you have a cold or something else that makes you speak hoarsely, you sound croaky, too. Put the two together and it’s easy to see where this image comes from. It seems to have originated in the USA in the mid-nineteenth century. A clergyman named Harvey Newcomb, in an improving book called How to Be a Man (1847), advised his young readers to resist the temptation of ‘improper diversions’ (the mind boggles) by saying no to them. He continued, ‘If you find a “frog in your throat,” which obstructs your utterance, go by yourself, and practise saying no, no, NO!’ Clearly the expression was already known by the time Harvey wrote it down, but this is the first recorded use.

Harvey didn’t restrict his advice to boys; in the same year he produced How to Be a Lady, which contains this gem for those who attend mixed-gender schools:

… the sports in which boys usually engage are improper for your sex; and for you to engage in rude, boisterous conversation and coarse jesting, such as ill-bred youth are wont to practise, would be highly unbecoming.

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