Make ends meet

One of the devastating side effects of COVID-19 is that many people have been forced to rely on food banks to help them "make ends meet." But exactly what ends are supposed to meet? Where does that saying come from?

The first recorded mention of the phrase dates to a 1662 book by Thomas Fuller called "The History of the Worthies of England" (i.e., worthy men). Published posthumously, the book was the first attempt at a dictionary of national biographies. Though Fuller was studious about researching original sources, he also had a fondness for epigrams, anecdotes, puns and other linguistic amusements.

In the entry for Protestant leader Edmund Grindal, Fuller wrote: "Worldly wealth he cared not for, desiring onely to 'make both ends meet'; and as for that little that 'lapped over', he gave it to pious uses in both universities and the founding of a Free-school at Saint Bees, the place of his nativity."

That the phrases are in single quotation marks denotes the sayings were already familiar to the general public. So though Grindal's bio clip offers the first written incidence of the phrase, its origin is still unknown.

A later written occurrence gives a hint. In 1698 E. B. Gent published a dictionary with the overly long name, "A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggars, Thieves, Cheats, etc. with An Addition of some Proverbs, Phrases, Figurative Speeches, etc." A cant is the jargon of a particular group; in other words, the book was a 17th century slang dictionary.

The entry for "Ends" includes, '"Tis good to make both Ends meet', or to cut your Coat according to your Cloth." It is fairly safe to conclude therefore that the saying probably originated from tailors who must make sure they had a sufficient amount of material before cutting a coat pattern. Fuller's "a little that lapped over" seems to support such an origin.

Since Fuller uses the phrase to indicate Grindal had enough money for his needs and still some left over for charitable endowments, another suggestion for the origin of the phrase relates it to accounting. In this instance, the two "ends" refer to income and expenditures, which must balance – or "meet" – in order for a person to be solvent.

Another dictionary, a French one dating from 1694, seems to verify that meaning.

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française uses the example: "Il ne sçauroit joindre un bout de l'année avec l'autre" [He cannot join one end of the year to the other]. The explanation accompanying the phrase is "Son bien ne luy suffit pas pour aller jusqu'au bout de l'an" [His goods are not sufficient for him to go until the end of the year].

Further confirmation that the French and English were speaking the same idiom comes from the Charles Lamb article "Old China" published in The London Magazine of March 1823. The title refers not to the country but to porcelain tableware imported from China. Drinking tea from a China set Lamb had newly purchased, he (under the pseudonym Elia) and his cousin muse about the days when they were poor: "It is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet-and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our exceedings-many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much-or that we had not spent so much-or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year-and still we found our slender capital decreasing."

Another suggested origin for "make ends meet," one more closely allied to the coat explanation, posits reference to a belt. In that instance, the implication was if the belt did not make ends meet (i.e. reach all the way around one's girth) one might have to starve oneself to become thin enough for the two ends of the belt to function together properly. Or if one's income did not reach to the end of the pay period, one might have to tighten one's belt.

Whether the phrase originally referred to coats, belts or finances, if you are fortunate enough to be able to make ends meet and, like Grindal, have some left over, the Seeley-Swan Community Food Bank can always use help helping others who are less fortunate.