I thought I knew my Onions and then I looked it up! I honestly thought it was just an English saying but other people have other ideas!
An RT-ism, I wish!
In French, there's the expression
occupez-vous de vos oignons which means "mind your own business" in English but can be literally translated as "take care of your onions".
Know your onions however means to be knowledgeable about a subject - a meaning which is clearly distinct from the French saying.
American phrase, first recorded in the May 1922 edition of Harpers Magazine:
According to
World Wide Words, this had nothing to do with any Mr. Onions, but:
The Phrase Finder agrees:
Edit: A tantalising
snippet in Google Books shows this may have been used in 1908 in a humorous poem in The Postal Record (Volumes 21-22 - Page 27). It' shown in the summary, and is interesting as the year 1908 is also shown. Care must be taken with snippets, as they're sometimes incorrectly dated, but here it is anyway:
4
In the days of wooden walled sailing ships - with no fridges or freezers - onions were a key part of the crew's staple diet. They provided vital protein and vitamins. Moreover, they would keep for a long time provided they were kept dry and in a dark space.
The ship's 'Purser' or 'Pusser' was responsible for storing the ship before sailing and very often he would purchase the necessary victuals from local markets. It was thus vital that the Purser could assess the quality of the food supplies that he was buying - a good Purser would '
know his onions'
The Phrase Finder goes on to conclude:
he phrase 'to know one's onion(s)' first appeared in print at least as early as 1891. Given its historical linguistic context, the 'source' of the phrase may be construed as the independent adoption of a generalized idiomatic response to the equally idiomatic and earlier-evidenced declaration that someone 'does not know the difference between an onion and [another object, commonly another vegetable]'. Both phrases, but particularly the latter, vary freely in individual use, but are loosely formulaic.1
OED (paywalled) defines 'to know one's onions' as "to be experienced in or knowledgeable about something". The
OED entry only mentions the plural variant "onions", attested from 1908 (note the slightly earlier appearance of the attestation shown in the compilation below, from January 1908 as compared to February):
The singular variant "onion" was, however, as far as I have discovered, the only variant in print up to 1908. The singular continued in frequent use into the 1920s, when the plural variant gradually came to dominate use. By the mid-1920s, the plural variant was used almost if not entirely exclusively.2
Early attestation of 'know one's onion(s)'
Early appearances of the phrase 'know one's onion(s)' were a regionalism centered on and predominantly from Pennsylvania. Occasional instances were found in the surrounding states of New York, Delaware, and New Jersey, with only one outlier (from Washington State).
All links are paywalled unless otherwise noted.
The Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey) 22 May 1891, Page 1:
The Evening Journal (Wilmington, Delaware) 06 May 1892, Page 2:
The Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey) 29 Feb 1892, Page 1:
The Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey) 05 Apr 1894, Page 1:
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 15 Jun 1898, Page 4:
The Evening Democrat (Warren, Pennsylvania) 27 Jun 1899, Page 4:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Washington) 04 Feb 1900, Page 28:
Buffalo Courier (Buffalo, New York) 14 Apr 1900, Page 4:
The Selinsgrove Times-Tribune (Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania) 20 May 1903, Page 1:
The New York Times (New York, New York) 07 Jun 1903, Page 6:
Republican News Item (Laport, Pennsylvania) 25 Jun 1903, Page 1:
The Index (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 26 Nov 1904, Page 7 (not paywalled):
Lewisburg Journal (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania) 06 Oct 1905, Page 7:
Wilkes-Barre Times (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) 18 May 1907, Page 4 [blurb headline]:
The Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey) 26 Oct 1907, Page 11:
The Wilkes-Barre Record (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) 02 Jan 1908, Page 4:
Early attestation of 'does not know an onion from a ——'
The Scottsboro Citizen (Scottsboro, Alabama) 01 Feb 1883, Page 2:
Ellsworth Messenger (Ellsworth, Kansas) 15 Apr 1885, Page 1:
The Gazette (Montreal, Canada) 22 Jun 1888, Page 8:
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) 22 Jul 1890, Page 3:
Northumberland County Democrat (Sunbury, Pennsylvania) 19 Sep 1890, Page 2:
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York) 29 Oct 1899, Page 25:
Endnotes
- For purposes of definition, the formula underlying the former phrase is "know(s) one's X", and the formula of the latter phrase is "do(es) not know the difference between X and Y".
- I do not know why the plural variant came to be preferred to the exclusion of the singular. As a matter of speculation, I observe that I am slightly more uncomfortable with the ill-defined referent of the metaphorical "onion" than I am with the equally ill-defined referents of the metaphorical "onions". My mild discomfort may be due to what I consider the stronger likelihood of inappropriate interpretations of "onion" than of "onions"
I don't know but have always been told that it is was a phrase that started among actors. C.T Onions wrote the first comprehensive glossary of Shakespeare's words. If an actor could speak his part without asking what a word meant he knew his onions. David Crystal has since compiled a more extensive glossary and if I'm working on a Shakespeare play I take it with me. I know my Onions but I don't know all my Crystal.
An old small time grocery store owner named Tommy Campbell in McGraw, NY used to tell all of us kids that bought candy from the store that we knew our onions. This was approximately 1965. I remember asking my father what the expression meant. He told me that he was probably short changing us. For example giving him a nickel for 4 cents worth of candy and being told you know your onions instead of getting the penny change back. While in college in the early 1980's I bought a copy of " The Dictionary of American Slang ". I no longer have possession of the book yet my memory recalls what my father had told me.Making you feel good about the transaction yet actually having "the wool pulled over your eyes".
Vince Kosuga captured the onion futures market in 1955-56 and enjoyed a monopoly of that culinary necessity. He knew his onions.
‘Know your onions’ is Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Onion rings’ = ‘things’. I heard this explained on a BBC radio show decades ago.
also building up seeds is not a worry any more just solo a load also @Waira i know you will smash the solos i just treat them like mini pots or a sawn off version lol and from what ive seen myself coco/clay pebbles seem to work amazing .anyhow guys i will catch you tmoz its bedtime here
or something very strong thats a lot of info lol
and i knew that saying he knows his onions don't know were i picked it up i was just wondering was you typing or copy and pasting it lol and I'm a little smashed myself my brother so will catch you tmoz .also i have a seed tub that's just got tons of freebies from over the years I'm going to solo a load through the year
