Question: Although I understand the gist of it, what exactly is the meaning and source of the expression "the proof is in the pudding"?
Answer: "The proof is in the pudding" is actually a shortened version of a very old proverb, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." It means that the real worth or success or effectiveness of something can only be determined by putting it to the test, appearances and promises aside - just as the best test of a pudding is to eat it.Sometimes the saying is reduced even further to simply a noun phrase, "proof of the pudding" or "the proof in the pudding." Then it is used to mean "confirmation" or "real test," as in "the proof of the pudding is if no one gets hurt." In fact, the shortened versions are used much more frequently nowadays than the long proverb with the "eating" phrase.
There are sources that say the maxim goes back in English to the 14th century. Though unsubstantiated, the claim is not without plausibility. But watch out! Back then no one was talking about the kind of sweet "pudding" confections we now get mostly from boxed mixes or pull-top snack cans or cafeteria counters. Fourteenth century puddings were gutsy! What they were, essentially, were sausages - mixtures of meat, cereal, spices and often blood, stuffed into intestines or stomach, and boiled.
If you're still wondering "why pudding?" it's useful to know that puddings were held in much higher esteem at one time, so much so that there was another old saying that went, in part, "if a woman knows how to make a pudding . . . she knows enough for a wife."
Husbands back then expected at least one pudding a day on the table. Even the eminent 18th century literary figure Samuel Johnson saw fit to commend his friend, the poet and translator Elizabeth Carter, thus "(she) could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from Greek . . . "
Add to that the concealed nature of pudding ingredients - whether in a blood pudding or one of the traditional sweet puddings full of dried fruit and nuts and enclosed in a dumpling crust - and the logic behind the expression becomes far less mysterious.
Whatever its actual origins, we find the expression in print since the 17th century. We have examples of its use by the English historian William Camden, by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Hamilton, and by Joseph Addison in his Spectator magazine, and it still remains popular today, in one or another of its versions.
Question: I've been told that the word "devil" in the expression "the devil to pay" does not refer to the theological "devil" but to some nautical term. Can you shed any light on this?
Answer: We are often told that the expressions "the devil to pay" and "between the devil and the deep (blue) sea" do not refer to Satan but to a perfectly innocent nautical devil. This "devil" is a seam in a ship's hull, on or below the waterline. "The devil to pay" is supposed to be a short form of "The devil to pay and no pitch hot." This interpretation depends on a homonym of the verb "pay" which means "to apply pitch." Unfortunately for the nautical explanation, both expressions are attested much earlier than is the requisite sense of "devil."
We first find "the devil to pay" in a poem written about 1500. The couplet, rendered in Modern English, goes "It would be better to stay at home forever than to serve here to please - or pay - the devil."
We have no evidence for the longer "the devil to pay and no pitch hot" until 1828. "Between the devil and the deep sea" goes back at least to 1637. Robert Munro, in "His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment called MacKeyes Regiment" wrote: "I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea." The "devil" in a ship's hull, on the other hand, is first reported in William Henry Smyth's "Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms," compiled about 1865.
It is true that nautical terms are likely to enjoy a long oral use without being written down. But 31/2 or even two centuries seems rather too long to be an acceptable assumption for the nautical explanation. It is more likely that this proverbial "devil" is the Devil himself.