Blowing Smoke Up One's Arse
🎤 I once interviewed at a radio station.
"Jason, best interview we've had." Genuinely said that.
Two months of silence later, I chased them.
"Oh, we went with an internal candidate."
In other words - they were blowing smoke up my arse.
Yes, the full phrase. Own it.
👉 Flattery designed to keep someone happy, with no intention of following through.
It sounds crude. The origin is worse.
⚓️
In the 18th century, doctors genuinely blew tobacco smoke into patients' rectums. Believed to revive drowning victims. Yes, really.
Kits were standard issue along riversides, ports and ships - anywhere water and people mixed badly.
The Royal Society for the Recovery of Drowned Persons even distributed them along the River Thames.
So why is this in Maritime Origins and not Medical Origins?
Because without ships, sailors and the constant proximity to water, the practice would never have spread as widely or embedded itself in everyday language.
Ports and rivers were where it happened most. Sailors were often the ones being "treated."
The phrase outlasted the medicine by about 200 years.
Which is more than can be said for my radio career.
Fun Facts
⚓️
While we’re on the topic of bottoms.
Here’s
my favourite Chinese idiom.
“Take off your pants to fart”
Meaning: It’s completely unnecessary.
A great way of saying “What’s the point?”
⚓️ The kit had a name The apparatus was called a "fumigator" - a bellows device carried by physicians and stocked in ship medical kits. Mainstream medicine, endorsed by the establishment.
⚓️ Science killed the treatment,
but kept the phrase The tobacco enema was debunked by the early 1800s. The expression "blowing smoke" survived - shifting neatly from a discredited medical procedure to a byword for exactly what it always was. Becoming as pointless as
"flogging a dead horse" - another phrase with fascinating maritime roots.
The Maritime Origins Series
Maritime Origins is a storytelling series created by Jason Nangle, Founder of Angle Recruitment, a global maritime recruitment and executive search firm.
The series explores the fascinating history behind everyday phrases that originated at sea, as well as the remarkable stories, traditions and characters that have shaped maritime culture.
Many sayings still used today were first spoken by sailors navigating the challenges of life on board ships. Alongside these phrase origins, the series also highlights lesser-known maritime stories, legends and historical moments from the world of shipping.
Through short stories and visual posts, Maritime Origins connects the language, heritage and traditions of seafarers with the modern maritime industry.
New posts in the series launch every Tuesday on LinkedIn and are then shared across other platforms including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X. Follow
Jason Nangle on LinkedIn and Angle Recruitment across your preferred social platforms.
The maritime origins of "in the doldrums," a sailor's phrase from the age of sail used for the windless belt near the equator where ships could sit becalmed for weeks.
In a hammock in a wooden sailing ship. A woman’s leg sticks up from a nearby hammock, “From ‘Show a leg’… ‘Shake a leg’ stuck!”
Dog watch comes from sailing ships: two short two‑hour watches (4–6pm, 6–8pm) that split a shift, rotating duties so no crew was stuck on the same hours every night.
