Learn English – When and how did we start getting “off the dime”

idiomsphrase-origin

In American English, for a long time we've had the idiom "to stop on a dime." It means to stop abruptly and completely. It came to be used as a description for something agile or nimble. Etymonline says

Phrase stop on a dime attested by 1954 (a dime being the physically smallest unit of U.S. currency).

But for the past several decades I've heard the expression get off the dime being used to mean "get started" or "get going" and is used in the same circumstances as the idiom "get a move on." It seems obvious to me that this must be a transposition of "stop on a dime" (a metaphorical one, at least). [N.B.: This supposition is no longer obvious and appears to be nothing more than my own folk etymology, given that all the answers point to a different derivation.]

I'm curious if anyone can show a link between "stop on a dime" and "get off the dime," or if there is some other explanation that might turn my bit of intuition into folk etymology.

Best Answer

According to The Word Detective get off the dime dates back to the 20's and predates Etymonline 1954 suggestion on stop on a dime. Actually, as shown below, the latter has an older origin, probably from the same period as the former.

  • “Get off the dime” has been around since at least the 1920s, and today it’s generally used to mean, as defined by the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, “to take action after a period of indecision or procrastination; to act” (“Congress [should] get off the dime and adopt the … budget proposal before it,” President Ronald Reagan, 1982).

  • Since a dime is a small unit of money and fairly easily to come by, this small coin has played a much larger role in US slang than, for instance, the hundred-dollar bill.

  • To “drop a dime on someone,” for instance, means to inform on them, usually by tipping off the police, and originated back in the 1960s when a call from a public telephone cost ten cents. “Dime” has also found a home in the slang of drug users, where a “dime” or “dime bag” has long meant ten dollars worth of a drug. The small size of a dime has also been used as a metaphor for “a small spot,” as in “stop on a dime” or “turn on a dime” when speaking of motor vehicles (or politicians).

  • “Get off the dime” dates back to the days of dance halls and “taxi dancers,” women employed by the halls to dance with strangers, usually for ten cents per dance (a grim occupation immortalized in the 1930 Rodgers and Hart song “Ten Cents a Dance”).

    • A contemporary account, published in 1925, explains the phrase: “Sometimes a … [dancing] couple would … scarcely move from one spot. Then the floor manager would cry ‘Git off dat dime!'” Similarly, “dancing on the dime” meant to dance very closely with very little movement, behavior that might well attract the attention of the Vice Squad and get the hall closed. Thus “get off the dime” referred both to the the customer as the “dime” he had paid and to the small spot (“dime”) on the floor where the couple seemed frozen.

Actually according to The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition By HarperCollins get off the dime is:

  • (1925+); an alteration of the expression stop on a dime, used to praise the brakes of a car.

Ngram shows usage of the two expressions are from the late 20's/early 30's.

The following extract suggests that they may have come into usage about the same period and in the same context:

  • Thanks to Jonathan Lighter's "Historical Dictionary of American Slang," we have the activity that coined the phrase. Carl Van Vechter, one of the earliest modern dance critics and author of the 1926 novel "Nigger Heaven" - a title nobody would use today - described the scene in a taxi-dance hall: "Sometimes a … couple would scarcely move from one spot. Then the floor manager would cry, Git off dat dime!"

  • To dance on a dime was to grind bodies tightly together in clothed but sexual contact, without moving from that spot; taxi dancers working for a dime (immortalized in the 1930 Lorenz Hart lyric "Ten Cents a Dance") were exhorted by their bosses to keep the customers moving. Thus, to get off the dime came to mean "to get moving."

(ytlcommunity.com)

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