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BREAKING A LEG: HISTORY AND MEANINGS

             Breaking a leg is the official phrase when we want to wish actors good luck before they go on stage. If you wish an actor “good luck” it has an opposite connotation. The origin of this superstition is obscure but it can also be used apart from theatrical professions. For dancers you don’t shout “break a leg!” but the French expression “merde”.

The earliest known reference in literature is from Edna Ferber’s A Peculiar Treasure (1939) about her fascination with the theater. “....and all the understudies sitting in the back row politely wishing the various principals would break a leg.”

Other anecdotal evidence is from theatrical memoirs and personal letters as early as the 1920s.

OTHER THEORIES In previous centuries To “break the leg” or “break a leg” was slang for bowing

or curtsying; to place one foot behind the other and bend at the knee “breaks” the line of the leg.

In ancient Greece, audiences did not clap. They stomped their feet to express their appreciation and it is said if they stomped long enough, they would break a leg. But another theory from Elizabethan times tells us that instead of applause the audience would bang their chairs on the ground, and if they liked it enough, the leg of the chair would break.

During gladiatorial combats in ancient Rome, the mandate was to fight to the death. Spectators might yell “quasso cruris” or the Latin equivalent of breaking a leg. This could be interpreted as a survival ploy so that instead of death they would only cripple the opponent--thus breaking his leg.

THE LINCOLN THEORY A popular but apocryphal explanation arose from the assassination of

Lincoln.             John Wilkes Booth claimed in his diary that he broke his leg leaping to the

stage of Ford’s Theatre after the murder. Perhaps he meant that by breaking his leg, his deed was worthy of remembrance. Some historians contend that he broke his leg when he fell from his horse trying to escape and that he often exaggerated and falsified his diary entries to make them more dramatic. The fact remains that actors did not begin to use the phrase until the 1920s.

NON-LITERAL REFERENCES One popular theory concerned the “legs” or side curtain of the theatre. A

company of actors should rush onstage through the curtains to take a lot of bows, thus “breaking a leg (side curtain) in the process.

The phrase to “get a leg up” might also mean catching your big/lucky break.

And then some attribute the phrase to a performance of David Garrick as Richard III in the 18th century. He became so entranced in the performance that he was unaware of a fracture.

Perhaps one of the more interesting ways to express “good luck” is that used by opera singers (but could also apply to any performer). “Toi Toi Toi” is an idiom used to ward off a spell or hex, often accompanied by knocking on wood and the sound associated with spitting. Saliva had demon-banishing power. (NOTE: Years ago I was fortunate enough to be on a State Department tour of Ah Wilderness and a leading impresario in Tel Aviv told us about “Toi Toi Toi” but explained that we must make the sound of spitting immediately after saying it. Or make the sound as we were saying it.) So in future “BREAK A LEG”

Resource: Wikipedia