Phrase Origins: On the Wagon

I always used to get confused with the phrase "on the wagon." It means that a person has vowed to not drink alcohol any longer. If a person who has vowed to stop drinking "falls off the wagon," that means that the person is drinking again.

I'm sure that I got confused because of some cartoon I saw where a bunch of drunk were on a wagon, so I thought the phrase "on the wagon" meant that somebody had joined with the other people who were drinking. I now don't get this confused because I know that "on the wagon," means that a person is sober from reminding myself of the meaning many times over the years.

However, I never wondered about the origin of this phrase. Was there a wagon that carried sober people and refused to carry drunks? Why would anybody say they were on a wagon if they weren't on a wagon?

A theory is that this comes from when the worker for the Salvation Army, Evangeline Booth, would pick up drunks on a wagon and deliver them to sobriety. It seems that if this were the case, though, it would be the other way around as I got confused (and perhaps it was not a cartoon that confused me, but information about this that I saw and so I did see drunks on a wagon.)

However, that theory is not true. Instead, this phrase comes from men who pledged not to drink alcohol. There was a pledge because of the anti-temperance organizations. In 1874, The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was founded. Then in 1893 The Anti-Saloon League was founded.

Men were encouraged to take "the pledge." The words were, "I promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks except used medicinally and by order of a medical man, and to discountenance the cause and practice of intemperance."

At this time, there were also things called "water wagons." These wagons did not carry drinking water. Instead, they carried water that was used to make the dusty streets damp during dry areas.

When a man who had taken "the pledge" was tempted to drink, he would say that he would rather drink water from the water wagon than take a drink of alcohol. Because of this, people would say that they were on the water wagon, which soon got shortened to "on the wagon."

In 1901, Alice Caldwell Hegan used the phrase figuratively in her comic, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabage Patch. One of her characters said, "I wanted to git him some whisky, but hoe shuck his head. 'I'm on the water-cart.'"

It was made clear that "on the water wagon" was used figuratively in March 1904 when The Davenport Daily Leader ran a story that included the line, "Peter Solle took a bad fall from the water wagon this morning. The water wagon was not that imaginary, visionary affair that is sometimes applied to he who signs the pledge, but was the real thing, all there and big as life."

Sources:

Martin, G. (n.d.). On the wagon. The meanings and origins of sayings and phrases | List of sayings | English sayings | Idiom definitions | Idiom examples | Idiom origins | List of idioms | Idiom dictionary | Meaning of idioms. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-the-wagon.html

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