Captain Edward J. Smith who went down with his ship The Titanic in 1912, would have been likely to have said “Little Tommy, It’s going to be as right as rain”. It was a popular new saying at the time. Eeek.
These days; 100 years on, your more likely to hear your cab driver say “It’s all Good love” when navigating the voyage to your front door.
A bit of history to this cute as saying...
The earliest example of the same meaning, quoted as a proverb as long ago as 1546, is “Right as a line” which in those days meant exactly what it said, “yes your lordship that is correct and acceptable”
Then by 1622 it had become “Right as my leg” ...I quite like this one...let’s bring it back.
In 1837 the Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers are quoted to say “Right as a trivet, sir”.
About the same time, or a little later, people were saying that things were as right as ninepence, as right as a book, as right as nails, or as right as the bank.
The first literary example I can find of this, my favourite rain saying is from Max Beerbohm's book Yet Again of 1909:
"He looked, as himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle'"; or "right as rain".
Right As Rain has never since disappeared, and you know what neither has the rain.
WET & WENDY
