Semper Ubi Sub Ubi
26 comments on this post.
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Harold Russell:
November 6th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
This will betray the large gaps in my literary education – but I am not familiar with the Robert Browning anecdote mentioned above. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me?
admin:
November 8th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Sure, but I should warn folks that the answer is “not safe for work,” i.e., contains content that some may find offensive.
See Wikipedia and Language Log.
cyranorox:
May 13th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
is it not the root of the other euphemism, ‘pussy’, via Cockney rhyming slang? ie, ‘T—, T—, pussy cat’?compare Fork, Fork, Duke of York ; fork= hand ,and Duke becomes the word for hand or usually fist.
TEDD CARMICHAEL:
March 28th, 2012 at 5:12 pm
I AM 87 YEARS OLD, AND MY MAMA USED THIS TERM EVERY TIME WE HAD MEAT FOR DINNER THAT WAS NOT TO HER LIKING. I NEVER KNEW WHAT IT MEANT, AND I DOUBT MAMA DID EITHER. BUT TODAY, AT LAST, WHEN THE TERM CAME TO MIND, I LOOKED IT UP. NOW MY MIND’S AT EASE.
JO ETTA JOHNSON:
November 26th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Yep! Heard this term all my life (I’m 67), but never knew its origin until today. Thanks!!!
Bonnie bibbee:
March 29th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
My grandmother used this term quite often. I never really knew what it meant . Thanks
Paul Pegelow:
April 13th, 2013 at 4:30 pm
The only difference between TEDD CARMICHAEL’S comments on March 28, 2012 and mine is that I’m 79.
April 13 2013
Dennis Hall:
October 14th, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Same as Tedd Carmichael’s, except it was father in law who used it all his life. He’s been gone for years and I’m 71.
Jeff C:
November 17th, 2013 at 9:12 am
My 85 year old Mom–who has Altztimers and is living with us– uses this saying to describe my wife’s cooking–especially with meats Lolol.
brandy mills:
December 3rd, 2013 at 12:57 pm
I maybe the only person old enough to know what the phrase tough as whit leather is…
My grand mother cooked this white leathery meat which was a piece of muscle tendon. for us kids to chew on, and we really did have to chew… That meat was so tough you chewed your jaws numb trying to soften it. But while we waited for a meal to be finished, our whit leather would hold us over til then.
We loved it! tasted good too, don’t ask me what she did to favor this meat, but you could string a piece off ..just like string cheese.!!
I don’t know if it came off the cows or the pigs.. But there would be one big muscle piece that was like that.. Ahh.. to have a piece of whit leather now..
Paul Hartwell:
April 19th, 2014 at 5:09 pm
My grandfather, a butcher, would cut up meat to feed to his greyhounds. Occasional he would hand me a piece of “whitleaher” and say, “try to break it.” Of course I couldn’t, but later in life I wondered just what part of the cow it came from. Never knew a modern butcher in any meat market that knew what I was talking about. For the record, I’m 87.
socrates:
August 21st, 2014 at 3:59 pm
In VA when I was a kid, we called that ‘hard meat’.
JaVae Ferrier:
October 19th, 2015 at 8:27 pm
This is what my father always referred to as “whitleather,” a white tough wedge of tissue in the roast beef my mother would cook. Had to chew it forever, and my sister and I used to fight over who got the whitleather. I haven’t thought of it in decades!
Kacee Conklin:
December 14th, 2015 at 12:09 am
I used to love whitleather as a kid. As an adult, I couldn’t remember what cut of meat this “wedge” of whitleather would come in. I hadn’t come across it in my pot roasts, my likely suspect … until tonight. It was not as big as the pieces I got back home but it was definitely the longed for whitleather of my youth. The cut of meat, in this case at least? Chuck roast. Hooray! Problem and longing, solved. :-)
BTW, I was curious if Google would have provided me with the answer I so yearned for. It didn’t really. I already knew it was some sort of beef.
Linda:
February 24th, 2016 at 3:05 pm
Just used that word yesterday.
Allen Alexander:
April 19th, 2016 at 6:52 pm
My father, who was born in 1889, used the term touch as “Whitleather” throughout my life. I never questioned the term, just assumed its accuracy as a very tough substance. I recently used the term around some contemporaries and got a look that said what in the H are you talking about? I always assumed that this was an aphorism for a very tough substance but never questioned it. Any help I can get on tracking down its origin will be appreciated.
Beverley Noel:
September 8th, 2016 at 5:24 pm
I( always wondernd what that meant,as my Grandmother said it every once in a while.I kind of knew it was some kind of meat.She said so many things I didn’t undestand Glad to know this, as I told my husband ,THAT was tough as whitleather.He liked it after I looked it up and found out. Thanks.
Neva Handy:
September 13th, 2016 at 1:54 pm
My father used that term. He was born in 1889.
Lora:
September 21st, 2016 at 6:31 pm
My mother would make a roast on Sunday when i was a kid. I always got the piece of whitleather. Kind of a whitish colored meat/fat but it sure was good. I could chew on it gor hours.
Sam Oswalt:
November 1st, 2016 at 9:14 pm
68 years old and heard the term all my life.
Melinda Thomure:
April 20th, 2018 at 1:23 pm
My grandmother and mother always used the term “Mad as whitleather.”
Ralph Womer:
April 30th, 2018 at 11:23 am
I’m 74! My father, who had a fear of contracting trichinosis, would have his ham or pork chops fried until it was as “tough as whitleather,” as my southern wife would say.
Freida Jones:
May 18th, 2019 at 12:55 am
My parents raised beef, and the whitleather was part of the roast beef Mama cooked. My sister’s and I loved to chew on it, but we could never break it down enough to swallow it. It was whitish-colored, and very tasty. Too tough to chew through. Thank you for the post. Butchers probably cut it out of the meat now.
Jeff:
December 22nd, 2019 at 5:26 pm
OK, I’ve got to weigh-in here. I, too, think I’ve heard the term all of my life and I am now 82. Also, for awhile in my past, I operated a little custom leather and harness shop. To the point, my father frequently used the phrase, but I never heard it applied to something edible. And, I never heard it as “white leather”. It was always “whet leather”. I guess I never asked what it meant. When I left the government back in 1981 and opened my leather shop in a small rural town, old timers would come in and ask if I had any “whet” leather. When I asked what it was, I usually got “that look” but finally learned that what they wanted was a long strap of damaged harness leather that I had replaced with something new. I was told that, over years of use, old harness got deeply impregnated with sweat and dirt which converted it to a semi-flexible “Whet leather” to hang on a post to sharpen knives, axes, razors, etc. I was told that the best “razor stops” were made from old harness.
charles:
December 21st, 2020 at 3:32 pm
At last, a man that knows what whit leather actually means. Thanks, Jeff, my father used the term all the time. It’s a razor-sharpening strop.
Charlie Snelling:
February 8th, 2021 at 9:28 am
Thank god for the final comment on December 21st, 2020 at 3:32 p.m. by Charles. Somebody got it right.
He is right on the money. Whet Leather is miss-pronounced “whitleather” sometimes. Any fine edge on a cutting tool, even today is best refined by “whetting” it on leather to get it ‘razor’ sharp. I still have my great grandfather’s “razor strop”. As you can see even strap is miss-pronounced here as “strop”. Tool and Die makers have a small tool with pieces of leather stretched over the top of it to “whet” the fine machined edge of something they dare not put a stone to.
Charlie Snelling
Athens, GA