Where does the expression seat-of-the-pants come from? These dictionaries (1, 2, 3) don't give much insight.
What is the etymology of seat-of-the-pants?
Best Answer
I believe the full phrase started as flying by the seat of your pants and it comes from the aviation community.
When flying an aircraft a pilot can rely on instruments, e.g., a turn coordinator, to tell him whether he is flying his airplane in coordinated flight or, he can rely on the way it feels. The pilot can feel whether the force keeping him in his seat is directly straight down into his seat as it is when you are sitting in a chair on the ground or whether it is going through the chair at an angle- picture yourself sitting on a chair on the side of a hill. You really can feel the difference in the seat of your pants.
As StonyB points out, this article from Popular Mechanics mentions that a pilot can also feel when the aircraft is climbing or diving by sensing how "heavy" or "light" he feels in his seat.
One should also note that the part of the pants or trousers that covers the buttocks is known as the seat. (4b)
I would think it's rather probable that it is a calque derived from the perfectly idiomatic German phrase "Was gibt's?". You see? "Was gibt's" <-> "What gives"
Pretty close. Don't know why the author of the linked source (Brian Joseph) doesn't see this and only considers "Was gibt es?" which you will rarely hear in colloquial speech.
Instead the e in 'es' is mostly dropped, hence: "Was gibts?"
Although the meaning has deviated a bit apparently.
In German it can only mean ~ "what's happening?" / "what do you want (from me)?"
I did a bit of a deep web crawl on this, as I've never heard a syllabus called a greensheet. This made me curious as to whether it might be regional.
I saw several uses of the word as a replacement for syllabus (often with syllabus in parenthesis as well). Several of these uses were as old as 2006. I decided to limit my search to anything before 2006 and found a single web page discussing the use of the word greensheet as a synonym for syllabus: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/style.htm. The purpose of the page isn't even to explain the word (it's all about style sheets and only mentions why a syllabus is called a greensheet in passing).
I hit a dead end after this discovery. However, that explanation could very well be the answer. Consider: I went to school on the east coast (at three different schools) and never heard a syllabus called a greensheet. SJSU is on the west coast and uses the term greensheet to refer to a syllabus. Proposition: The word greensheet started either at SJSU or, at least, in that geographical area because the syllabi were/are printed on green paper.
Best Answer
I believe the full phrase started as flying by the seat of your pants and it comes from the aviation community.
When flying an aircraft a pilot can rely on instruments, e.g., a turn coordinator, to tell him whether he is flying his airplane in coordinated flight or, he can rely on the way it feels. The pilot can feel whether the force keeping him in his seat is directly straight down into his seat as it is when you are sitting in a chair on the ground or whether it is going through the chair at an angle- picture yourself sitting on a chair on the side of a hill. You really can feel the difference in the seat of your pants. As StonyB points out, this article from Popular Mechanics mentions that a pilot can also feel when the aircraft is climbing or diving by sensing how "heavy" or "light" he feels in his seat.
One should also note that the part of the pants or trousers that covers the buttocks is known as the seat. (4b)