I’m still working on trying to get the word out about the video for helping those affected by the floods and hurricanes.  I guess we’re just not going to get very many requests since Lindsays’ blog post didn’t really stir the pot.  I was hoping that by having others spread the word, we’d start to see more people making requests, but that just hasn’t been the case.  It was a good idea, but it didn’t seem to really work well.  I have a couple of ladies who are still trying to pass the information along, and unless that works, we probably will not be seeing many more requests.

I’m getting ready to file this under, a good idea that didn’t work like I thought it would.  If I had a dollar for every idea I thought was good but didn’t have big impact, I’d be sitting pretty.  That’s such a weird expression…I’m going to check it out.   From Phrase Finder, here’s what I found:

Sitting pretty

Meaning

Comfortably placed or well situated.

Origin

We don’t know how the expression ‘sitting pretty’ was derived. That is, we don’t know who or what was being referred to as ‘pretty’ when the term was coined.

The image of a young woman posing for a photograph or ducks sitting tight and making a difficult target for shooters may spring to mind. The expression isn’t known until the early 20th century so both of the above are plausible.

We do have something that can help locate the source of the phrase. The word ‘pretty’ has another meaning, in addition to the more usual ‘attractive’ and that is ‘in an advantageous or safe position’.

The earliest uses of the phrase in print seem to point to ‘sitting pretty’ just meaning ‘sitting (in a real or metaphorical sense) in a position of advantage.

Those first uses are all American and we can conclude that ‘sitting pretty’ was coined in the USA. Here’s an example, from the Nebraska newspaper The Lincoln Star, May 1915:

Clyde Wares returned to his club in the metropolis yesterday and according to reports everything is ‘sitting pretty’.

 

Back to me:  I’m not sure who Clyde Wares is, but the fact that he returned to his club in the metropolis in 1915 tells me more than I need to know.  Apparently, not only his club was, but it seems old Clyde was probably, “sitting pretty” too.   I always thought the term referred to money, as in sitting pretty meant that they had a lot of money, but apparently it has to do with feeling safe or, in fact, oddly enough, pretty…  How about that reference to ducks sitting tightly to make a difficult target for hunters?  I guess that makes sense, but I’d prefer to think of it as the woman in the picture, actually sitting pretty.  OK, so I learned enough for the day…I don’t want my brain to explode over sitting pretty, now do I?

 

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