Made of Whole Cloth

Those of you who engage with me in person know that I am fascinated by language... how words develop as they move from language to language, how languages differ and how they stay surprisingly connected, how we play with words,  how we come to use words and phrases to mean certain things.

I was thinking today of the phrase "whole cloth,"  as in "That story was made out of whole cloth."

World Wide Words, on the internet -- that delightful tool -- indicates that the phrase originally meant an entire piece of fabric from which nothing had been cut, or made. It was a whole piece of cloth. It makes sense, and is tracked making that sense at least back to the 15th century.  But as is frequently the case, somewhere it "took a 180" and began to mean nearly the opposite. In the early 19th century in the US, "whole cloth" began to refer to something completely fabricated, an invention, a lie.  The folks at World Wide Words surmise that perhaps something made of whole cloth has no history or previous associations, and that it is therefore created out of a "blank sheet" -- the way a lie is created. Often in my life, when I've used the phrase, I've thought of it as "hole cloth" -- can something made out of holes really exist?

I mention this by way of indicating that my "created somethings" today were two letters I had to write at work, which were, in many ways, made out of whole cloth/ hole cloth.  The creative effort involved telling two different entities the story they wanted to hear without actually using the words to form a lie.  Part of me is pleased I can figure out how to do this. Another part of me reminds me that perhaps I differ from Bernie Madoff only in scale.

The soundtrack in my head as I wrap this up and head to bed comes from Jackson Browne's "The Pretender."

"... and when the evening rolls around
I'll go home and lay my body down
and when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again, Amen...

Caught betweent he longing for love
and the struggle for the legal tender...

Are you there? Say a prayer
for the Pretender..."


Are you there?