What Is The Origin Of (114)?…
Queer the pitch
This phrase is used to indicate that someone has done something that has had the effect of spoiling the business in hand. Variants exist where the definite article is replaced by the possessive such as one’s or their or my.
For many of a certain generation their first encounter with the word queer, either adjectivally or as a noun, was as a pejorative term for someone who was or was considered to be homosexual. But queer has had a long and colourful history as the English language evolved. At the start of the 16th century it was used as an adjective to describe someone or thing which was strange, peculiar or eccentric, probably deriving its etymology from the Low German quer which meant perverse or off centre. Interestingly, the use of the term to describe a homosexual is directly from this meaning.
In the 18th century and later queer as an adjective also took the meaning of feeling out of sorts or unwell. Charles Dickens used the word in this context in the Pickwick Papers, “legs shaky – head queer – round and round – earthquake sort of feeling – very”. By then it had also taken on its third grammatical form, a verb, initially meaning to puzzle, ridicule or cheat, but from around 1812 taking the sense of to spoil or ruin or to jeapordise – precisely the meaning it has in our idiom.
Pitch as a noun has a variety of meanings ranging from the quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it to a piece of land on which a sport or a game is played to an area where a street vendor or performer stations themselves to attract a crowd or custom. It is this latter sense that is deployed in our phrase. The phrase first appeared in print in The Swell’s Night Guide of 1846, “Nanty coming it on a pall, or wid cracking to queer a pitch”. In the days before telephone boxes and the internet if someone wanted to enjoy the services of a sex worker, there were a number of organs they could turn to help them in their search. Swell’s Night Guide was one and the pitch referred to in its usage is the area in which the worker operated.
Interestingly, as the 19th century progressed our phrase was taken up by theatrical types who used it as a synonym for upstaging. In a theatrical memoir dating to 1866 we have this rather dramatic description of an incident in a theatre and the admission that our phrase was part of the theatrical argot, “The smoke and fumes of “blue fire” which had been used to illuminate the fight came up through the chinks of the stage, fit to choke a dozen Macbeths, and – pardon the little bit of professional slang – poor Jamie’s “pitch” was “queered” with a vengeance”.
Whilst we are on the subject of queer, we may as well deal with on queer street which is used to describe someone who is in some difficulty, usually financial. Although it has been associated with Carey Street which is where the bankruptcy courts were held, the courts only moved there in the 1840s. Queer Street was defined in a revised edition of Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as “wrong, improper, contrary to one’s wish. It is queer street, a cant phrase to signify that it is wrong, or contrary to our wish”. In other words, it takes on the meaning for queer that was current at the time.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Charles Dickens, meanings of pitch, meanings of queer, Night Guide, origin of on queer street, origin of queer the pitch, Pickwick Papers, theatrical argot
