Faithless tomato
A be faithless tomato is a proverbial saying that designates a treacherous or unreliable people of appointments or commitments fails to comply. It can also mean that this person has not answered a letter or has not been in contact with the speaker for a long time through visits or the like.
Origin of the phrase
This saying goes back to the 1920s. The tomato came to Europe from Mexico under the name Tomatl or Tumatl Americanorum in the 16th century , was considered poisonous for a very long time and was therefore only grown as an ornamental , not as a useful plant , especially in gardens in southern Germany . At that time the tomato still had names such as "golden apple", "love apple" or "paradise apple"; the latter has been preserved in the name "Paradeiser", which is still used in Austria today.
The Académie française did not accept the word tomato until 1835 , before the nightshade plant was called pomme d'amour ; this recognition of the name also contributed to its spread in Germany.
Background of the phrase
One explanation for the phrase could be the tomato cultivation itself, which was characterized by many failures from the last third or the end of the 19th century and was therefore an uncertain thing.
More likely, however, the First World War is likely to be the origin of the saying: The Kingdom of Italy , allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary since 1882 ( Triple Alliance ), did not enter World War I, sided with the Allies in 1915 (see London Treaty (1915) ), and so the Italians were considered word-breaking and unreliable. Since tomato cultivation was widespread in Italy, one saw an analogy between the unfaithful Italians who eat tomatoes and the unreliable (because they cannot yet be cultivated without setbacks) tomatoes. A similar word formation ( neologism , suitcase word ) through the identification of the Italians with a food is found in the insulting word of the Italians as "Faithful noodles", which was still widespread at this time.
Küpper offers another possible explanation : It could have been a disguised takeover of the expression " perfidious Albion " from 1793 for the alleged underhandedness of British foreign policy. Since the name of the British soldier since the Boxer Rebellion (1900/1901) as " Tommy " was also common in Germany and "Albion" stood for England / Great Britain, "Tommy" would have been used colloquially as a representative of Great Britain as a tomato.
The association of the tomato with love (as in "love apple") and the poison of the nightshade family may well have led to the adjective "faithless" in the phrase.
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d Lutz Röhrich: Lexicon of the proverbial sayings. 5 volumes. Freiburg i. Br. 1991, volume 5, page 1630; Lemma: "tomato"
- ↑ a b Klaus Müller: Lexicon of speeches. Origin and meaning of German idioms. Munich 2005; Page 613, Lemma “a faithless tomato”.
- ↑ in Müller the French name is reproduced as ümme d'amour [sic!]
- ↑ Heinz Küpper: Dictionary of German colloquial language. 1st edition, 6th reprint Stuttgart / Munich / Düsseldorf / Leipzig 1997, page 839, Lemma Tomato .