etymologymeaningphrases
My father just used an interesting phrase: hello the fire. He said it was a way to let me know he was coming without startling me. I've never heard this phrase, and I can't find anything about it online. He said he remembers it having to do with the Old West, but that was all he could recall.
What is the origin and meaning of this phrase?
"How it turns out" is also often phrased in the form of, "tell me how it went". "turn" and "went" are directly related, as "went" comes from an old word "wend", which means "turn".
Isn't that interesting? When you ask how something went, you are literally asking how something "turned" out.
Went is the past tense of go. Turn represents just that, rotation or revolution, a thing going.
The New Oxford American has this:
rest one's case conclude one's presentation of evidence and arguments in a lawsuit.
• humorous said to show that one believes one has presented sufficient evidence for one's views.
It predates Perry Mason by a bit. My New Shorter Oxford English dates the following definition of rest from the mid-1800s:
rest v.
c. Voluntarily conclude presenting evidence in a law case. US.
But I found use of rest [one's] case as early as 1744 (check) from a British trial published in The Gentleman's Magazine Vol. XIV:
Best Answer
I believe this is a variant of "hello the camp", which is used as your father describes: when you're about to enter someone's encampment, as a kind of warning/greeting in lieu of knocking on the nonexistent door. (There's an elided "to" in there: the full/grammatical form would be "hello to the camp".)
I imagine "hello the fire" could be used if there isn't an encampment to speak of, just a fire with guys sitting around it.