Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. For as much as cigars give off smoke that'll stick to your clothes, they've also spawned some similarly sticky idioms In the English language. There's sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a meaning that you can't always attribute Fredian sub meetings to things. The quote is often attributed to Freud himself, but that seems to be apocryphal. Another one that's slightly old fashioned but still kicking around is what we need is a good five cent cigar, which was popularized in the nineteen teens by then Vice President of the United States Thomas Riley Marshall. If you're unfamiliar, it means that what we need is something that's sensibly affordable but still pragmatically useful, as opposed to something overly complicated or expensive. He said it during a senate debate about our country's needs. But perhaps more common these days, if not less old fashioned, there's the phrase close but no cigar. Oh. When someone said this to you, you probably didn't ask for a cigar. Maybe you don't even like them. So why is someone abruptly denying you one. This phrase is most often used when someone is nearly but not quite successful at something like a football player drops an easy catch, or a desperate commuter runs but misses their bus pulling away from the bus stop, or a math student doesn't catch a critical detail and screws up their whole equation. These are all situations worthy of a close but no cigar. The gist is obvious to anyone who grew up hearing it spoken among their friends and family. Yet even if you understand what close but no cigar means, you might wonder exactly where this idiom originated. After all, what do cigars have to do with success? It turns out cigars were once used as prizes for carnival games in the United States in the early nineteen hundreds. These games of skill or chance were often exasperatingly difficult, and most people failed to win a prize. Such games are still a feature of fairs today. Think of ring tosses that never seemed to land, or basketball hoops that spit out every ball thrown their way. When cigars were the prizes. After a participant failed, a carnival barker or the game runner might shout close but no cigar. The phrase close but no Cigar appeared in the script for the nineteen thirty five film Annie Oakley, but there were earlier recorded uses, both in sports reporting and in national geographic magazine. No matter who printed it first, it seems that the phrase traveled quickly through the American vernacular because of the way that carnivals moved from place to place. In an article for the magazine Cigar Ficionado, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, wrote that the game in question was specifically one of those games of strength called the high ball or high striker, where the player uses a large hammer to strike a lever and send a weight to high enough up a column to ring a bell at the top. But it seems that several different games might have inspired the phrase, and in other countries as well. In nineteen oh two, a book called The Night Side of London described many social scenes and entertainments throughout Bustling Edwardy in London, including a traveling carnival with games to play. A quote another penny gives you the privilege of trying to roll three balls into certain holes with numbers attached there on two. Should you score twenty, you will win a cigar, but you do no more than score nine. Undiscouraged or perhaps encouraged by this fact, you spend another penny, and another and another, but you don't get the cigar. And it is well for you that you don't, for there are cigars and cigars on you go, and next you try your hand at the coconuts, or the skittles, or the clay pipes, or in the shooting alleys, and so on and on until your stock of pennies and patience is exhausted. Cigars are no longer offered as prizes to carnival goers, though these days we have to settle for oversized stuffed animals or the like. Today's episode is based on the article why do we say close but no Cigar? On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with hostuffwork dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. For as much as cigars give off smoke that'll stick to your clothes, they've also spawned some similarly sticky idioms In the English language. There's sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a meaning that you can't always attribute Fredian sub meetings to things. The quote is often attributed to Freud himself, but that seems to be apocryphal. Another one that's slightly old fashioned but still kicking around is what we need is a good five cent cigar, which was popularized in the nineteen teens by then Vice President of the United States Thomas Riley Marshall. If you're unfamiliar, it means that what we need is something that's sensibly affordable but still pragmatically useful, as opposed to something overly complicated or expensive. He said it during a senate debate about our country's needs. But perhaps more common these days, if not less old fashioned, there's the phrase close but no cigar. Oh. When someone said this to you, you probably didn't ask for a cigar. Maybe you don't even like them. So why is someone abruptly denying you one. This phrase is most often used when someone is nearly but not quite successful at something like a football player drops an easy catch, or a desperate commuter runs but misses their bus pulling away from the bus stop, or a math student doesn't catch a critical detail and screws up their whole equation. These are all situations worthy of a close but no cigar. The gist is obvious to anyone who grew up hearing it spoken among their friends and family. Yet even if you understand what close but no cigar means, you might wonder exactly where this idiom originated. After all, what do cigars have to do with success? It turns out cigars were once used as prizes for carnival games in the United States in the early nineteen hundreds. These games of skill or chance were often exasperatingly difficult, and most people failed to win a prize. Such games are still a feature of fairs today. Think of ring tosses that never seemed to land, or basketball hoops that spit out every ball thrown their way. When cigars were the prizes. After a participant failed, a carnival barker or the game runner might shout close but no cigar. The phrase close but no Cigar appeared in the script for the nineteen thirty five film Annie Oakley, but there were earlier recorded uses, both in sports reporting and in national geographic magazine. No matter who printed it first, it seems that the phrase traveled quickly through the American vernacular because of the way that carnivals moved from place to place. In an article for the magazine Cigar Ficionado, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, wrote that the game in question was specifically one of those games of strength called the high ball or high striker, where the player uses a large hammer to strike a lever and send a weight to high enough up a column to ring a bell at the top. But it seems that several different games might have inspired the phrase, and in other countries as well. In nineteen oh two, a book called The Night Side of London described many social scenes and entertainments throughout Bustling Edwardy in London, including a traveling carnival with games to play. A quote another penny gives you the privilege of trying to roll three balls into certain holes with numbers attached there on two. Should you score twenty, you will win a cigar, but you do no more than score nine. Undiscouraged or perhaps encouraged by this fact, you spend another penny, and another and another, but you don't get the cigar. And it is well for you that you don't, for there are cigars and cigars on you go, and next you try your hand at the coconuts, or the skittles, or the clay pipes, or in the shooting alleys, and so on and on until your stock of pennies and patience is exhausted. Cigars are no longer offered as prizes to carnival goers, though these days we have to settle for oversized stuffed animals or the like. Today's episode is based on the article why do we say close but no Cigar? On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with hostuffwork dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.