It ’s always a embossment to take heed that someone or something will be veracious as rainwater — a.k.a . , back to normal and doing well . But when you recollect about it literally , it ’s not at once obvious what being ripe as rain would mean . So where did we get thiscurious expressionfrom , and what ’s so right about rainwater , anyway ?
The origins of the idiom particular date all the wayback to 1400 , when the Medieval poem “ Roman de la rose ” ( “ Romance of the Rose ” ) used the musical phrase “ veracious as an diamond , ” referring to a diamond or lodestone . A exchangeable 1546 saw extend the much catchier “ correct as a line . ”
The idea was that the “ right ” object would not only be something neat or square but have a more metaphoric correctness and correctitude to it . The phrasing must have really stick with reader because the formulathrivedfor centuries after that . Some interesting representative includeright as a gunslinger , veracious as my leg , correct as ninepence , andright as a trivet , the latter notably used in 1837 by Charles Dickens inThe Pickwick Papers .
None of those options have the same gang to them asright as raindoes , though . This special looping egress in late-19th one C Britain , with one of the first printings look in an1886 issueof the London newspaperThe Weekly Dispatch . A couple X afterwards , Max Beerbohm used it alongside a similar alliterative idiom in his bookYet Again :
“ He looked , as himself would undoubtedly have said , ‘ fit as a fiddle ’ ; or ‘ right as pelting . ’ ”
It ’s thought by some thatright as rainis likely a reflection of the typical English weather condition . As the forecast in the United Kingdom is so notoriously grey , nothing could be “ right , ” or more as thing should be , than a rainy day .
aright as rainquickly replace its other variants and has been in the lexicon since then . The alliteration of thers really adds to the gay notion of the phrase , helping to emphasize its cocksure meaning . In fact , the direction it feed off the lingua is one of thetheoriesfor why it in the end stuck . It is , at least , a mess more pleasurable to say than ” right as an adamant . ”
