[ti:Bag Expressions] [ar:Bob Doughty] [al:WORDS AND THEIR STORIES] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]Go to 51voa.com for more... [00:10.09]Now, the VOA [00:12.67]Special English program [00:14.72]WORDS AND THEIR STORIES. [00:17.40]Different people have [00:20.29]different ways of saying things [00:22.90]¨C their own special expressions. [00:26.18]Each week we tell about [00:28.53]some popular American expressions. [00:31.49]The bag is one of the most simple [00:34.94]and useful things in the world. [00:37.28]It is a container [00:39.35]made of paper or cloth. [00:41.40]It has given the world [00:43.66]many strange expressions [00:45.59]that are not very simple. [00:47.89]Some of them are used [00:50.23]in the United States today. [00:52.52]One is bagman. [00:55.61]It describes a go-between. [00:58.46]The go-between sees to it [01:01.96]that money is passed [01:03.80]¨C often illegally [01:05.49]¨C from one person to another. [01:08.58]Another widely-used expression [01:11.83]is to let the cat out of the bag. [01:15.67]It is used when someone tells [01:18.57]something that was supposed [01:20.22]to be secret. [01:22.06]No one can explain how the cat [01:25.00]got into the bag. [01:26.33]But there is an old story [01:28.98]about it. [01:30.92]Long ago tradesmen sold things [01:34.31]in large cloth bags. [01:36.39]One day a woman asked for a pig. [01:40.66]The tradesman held up a cloth bag [01:44.32]with something moving inside it. [01:47.07]He said it was a live pig. [01:50.56]The woman asked to see it. [01:53.80]When the dishonest tradesman [01:56.58]opened the bag, out jumped a cat [02:00.17]¨C not a pig. [02:02.26]The tradesman's secret was out. [02:05.24]He was trying to trick her. [02:08.14]And now everybody knew it. [02:12.08]The phrase to be left [02:14.70]holding the bag [02:16.08]is as widely used [02:17.77]as the expression [02:19.40]to let the cat out of the bag. [02:22.67]This expression makes the person [02:25.62]left holding the bag responsible [02:28.02]for an action, [02:30.30]often a crime or misdeed. [02:33.09]That person is the one [02:35.73]who is punished. [02:36.86]The others involve [02:38.82]in the act escape. [02:41.55]Where the expression came from [02:43.93]is not clear. [02:45.69]Some say that General [02:48.01]George Washington used it [02:50.43]during the American Revolutionary War. [02:53.52]One of Washington's officers, [02:56.76]Royall Taylor, used the expression [03:00.70]in a play about Daniel Shay's rebellion. [03:04.43]The play was in seventeen eighty-seven, [03:08.42]after Taylor helped [03:10.61]to put down Shay's rebellion. [03:12.70]Shays led a thousand war veterans [03:17.44]in an attack on a federal building [03:20.12]in Springfield, Massachusetts. [03:23.53]Guns were in the building. [03:25.23]Some of the protesters were farmers [03:28.32]who had no money to buy seed. [03:31.87]Some had been put in prison [03:34.86]for not paying their debts. [03:36.80]They were men who fought one war [03:40.24]against the king of England, [03:41.83]and were now prepared to fight [03:44.42]against their own government. [03:46.33]Most of the rebels were captured. [03:50.21]Shays and some of the officers escaped. [03:54.79]In his play, Taylor describes [03:58.72]Shays as disappearing, [04:01.01]giving others "the bag to hold." [04:05.09]A bag is useful in many ways. [04:09.37]Just be careful not to let the cat [04:13.21]out of the bag, or someone [04:15.70]may leave you holding the bag. [04:19.44](Music) [04:26.28]You have been listening to [04:28.27]the VOA Special English program, [04:31.27]WORDS AND THEIR STORIES. [04:34.26]This is Bob Doughty.