“‘There's no real argument against it,’ says Catherine Utley, 59. ‘People are getting the wrong end of the stick.’”
“Maybe they got the wrong end of the stick when somebody suggested they should buy a Little Trees air freshener for the car.”
The original meaning of this phrase appears to have been to fare worse, with the current meaning evolving during the 1800s [1]. According to Ammer [2], this expression refers to a walking stick, which is useless if held upside down.
However, Jack claims that the phrase dates back to Roman times and the use of communal toilets where people sat side by side. The Romans apparently used a short staff with a sponge tied to one end for personal hygiene and had to take care not to get hold of the wrong end when reaching out to use it [3]. This practice is supported by Britten in an article with this phrase in its title, although he does not comment specifically on the origins of the idiom [4].
[1] Cresswell, Julia. “wrong” In The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press, 2009.
[2] “wrong end of the stick, the” In The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, by Christine Ammer. 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin, 2013.
[3] Jack, Albert. Red Herrings & White Elephants: The Origins of the Phrases We Use Every Day (pp. 238–239). Kindle Edition.
[4] Britten, M. (2014),'Don't Get the Wrong End of the Stick: Lifting the Lid on Roman Toilet Behaviour', Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 7, Issue 1, http://www.warwick.ac.uk/reinventionjournal/issues/volume7issue1/britten Date accessed [17/01/19].
Photo credit: Andy Wallace
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