{"id":32216,"date":"2014-05-02T00:09:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T07:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=32216"},"modified":"2014-05-01T22:55:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T05:55:18","slug":"origin-phrase-mind-beeswax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/origin-phrase-mind-beeswax\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origin of the Phrase “Mind Your Own Beeswax”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bee\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> the origin of the phrase \u201cmind your own beeswax.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMind your own beeswax\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s none of your beeswax\u201d are common phrases you might hear being shouted by six-year-olds on the school playground. For the uninitiated, they basically mean \u201cmind your own business\u201d or \u201cit\u2019s none of your business,\u201d but some people think it\u2019s more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

There is a popular story that says back in the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries, women who suffered from disfiguring marks left by small pox<\/a> used beeswax to smooth out their complexion. One suggested theory is that if someone got too close or was staring too long, a woman would say \u201cmind your own beeswax,\u201d as in, \u201cstop staring at mine.\u201d Another is that the beeswax would start to melt if a woman sat too close to the fire, and their companions would have to tell them to \u201cmind their own beeswax\u201d which was dripping off their chins.<\/p>\n

Beeswax has been commonly used in cosmetics for years, most notably in Burt\u2019s Bees products, but this origin story is pure myth. The story started being circulated by a chain e-mail called \u201cLittle History Lesson\u201d which made the rounds in 2000.<\/p>\n

The first record of \u201cmind your own beeswax\u201d actually appears in 1929 in a children\u2019s book, with additional early records following in 1934 and 1939, quite a few years after women were supposedly slathering wax on their faces and coining popular expressions about it.<\/p>\n

Aside from there being no documented cases of beeswax being used as a remedy for pockmarks, there are documented medicines in their place. Pockmarks were considered to be a problem, but instead of wax, women would use brightly coloured patches of cloth and stick them on their faces with adhesive to cover the marks. This sounds a little ridiculous, but it would probably sound pretty odd to someone from the 18th and 19th centuries to hear that people today inject botulinum toxin type-A (a.k.a. Botox) into their faces to improve their look. Another trick they used back then was face powder made from lead flakes, which might have covered up their scars but wasn’t exactly beneficial to their health.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence to suggest that \u201cbeeswax\u201d is anything more than a funny, and convenient, substitution for \u201cbusiness.\u201d The phrase \u201cmind your own business\u201d has been around for a long time, and is incredibly straightforward: it is a phrase to tell someone to pay attention to their own affairs rather than yours. It\u2019s thought that changing \u201cbusiness\u201d to \u201cbeeswax\u201d probably softened the phrase, making it sound a little less harsh.<\/p>\n

One etymologist, Mark Forsyth, has noted that the word \u201cbeeswax\u201d was slang for \u201ctedious bore\u201d in the 19th<\/sup> century. Therefore, the phrase \u201cmind your own beeswax\u201d might in fact be \u201cmind your own, beeswax.\u201d That is, \u201cnose out, you bore.\u201d However, Forsyth admits that the substitution theory carries a lot of weight too, since the words \u201cbusiness\u201d and \u201cbeeswax\u201d sound quite similar.<\/p>\n

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