Englishevery Tom, Dick and Harry
Meaning: Everyone.
Example: “The party was supposed to be small, but every Tom, Dick and Harry showed up.”
Equivalents in other languages
German: Hinz und Kunz Literally: Hinz and Kunz
Origin: Using ordinary, common male names as stand-ins for "just anyone" is old: Shakespeare pairs Tom, Dick, and Francis this way in 1 Henry IV (1597), and Elizabethan English already had a habit of pairing generic names like Jack and Tom, or Tom and Tib, for the same purpose. The specific trio "Tom, Dick and Harry" is first recorded in 1657, in the writing of the English theologian John Owen, with the modern "every" form settling in by the early 1800s. A near-identical device shows up independently in medieval Bologna, where the 12th-century jurist Irnerio used the placeholder Latin names Titius, Gaius, and Sempronius for exactly the same purpose — the same linguistic need for anonymous everymen, solved the same way in two unrelated legal and literary traditions.
More English idioms
- fall off the wagon To lose control of oneself and engage in a compulsive behavior.
- fall on deaf ears To be heard but ignored, or to be heard but to have no effect.
- feather one's nest To build up one's wealth, often quietly or dishonestly.
- far cry from something Much less than what was expected or anticipated.
- feel something in one's bones To sense something without being able to see, hear or feel it; to have a premonition.
- feel the pinch To have less money than one used to have, and less than one feels is necessary.
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