Question: The other night I heard a sportscaster use the phrase "hat trick." I have heard this before without giving it much thought, but now I'm curious. How did this expression come about? And what exactly does it mean?
Answer: It is believed that "hat trick" was originally applied to the feat in cricket of dismissal by the bowler of three batsmen with three consecutive balls. Apparently, cricket bowlers who accomplished this difficult feat were awarded a bonus of a new hat. The cricket sense of "hat trick" was first recorded in 1877. The term is now applied to hockey and soccer as well and means the scoring of three goals - not necessarily consecutively - by one player in one game. Another sport in which this term has been adopted is horse racing, where it is used when a jockey rides a winner in three consecutive races or wins an annual race for three consecutive years.
Question: When and how did the expression "up a creek" originate?
Answer: The history of "up a creek" (or "up the creek") is not known for certain, but it may meander back to the late 1820s when a similar expression, "up salt river," was first recorded.
"Up salt river" was a popular political slang term for "defeated" in the 19th century. For a long time it was thought to have originated as just that - a political slang term. A story that appeared in the 1920s supposedly explaining its origin was taken as historical fact. According to this account, back in 1832 presidential candidate Henry Clay had been literally rowed up Salt River, a branch of the Ohio in Kentucky, when he was supposed to have been taken to make a campaign speech in Louisville, on the Ohio. He missed giving the speech and lost the election to his opponent, Andrew Jackson. Make the oarsman a Jackson supporter and you have a colorful, if apocryphal, tale behind the expression "up salt river."
Research eventually revealed, however, that "up salt river" definitely predated the 1832 campaign, if only by a few years. This use of "salt river," in turn, probably arose from its earlier use in denoting a wild, uncultivated area, as when "one of those two fisted backwoodsmen" was described in 1828 as a "Salt River Roarer." The original references to "rowing up salt river" have nothing to do with defeating a political candidate, but relate instead to the rough-and-tumble, backwater quality of the river's course. To send someone "up salt river" was simply to get rid of him or punish or overcome him in some way.
What does all this have to do with "up a creek," which means "in a difficult or perplexing situation"? That the two expressions have something in common can only be con-jectured.
In fact, the simplest form of this expression, "up a creek," was itself not recorded until 1918.