I was gazing at the weeds in our onion bed this morning, when I wondered where the phrase “know you onions” comes from. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable came to the rescue. It dispensed with the references to C.T. Onions, author and editor of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. That isn’t it. It’s as simple as onion rings, things. To know your onions is to know things.
I had looked up onions in the index, and it directed me to know. Before I reached onions, I found the phrase “know a hawk from a handsaw”. Brewer’s explained that it’s a line spoken by Hamlet. Apparently Shakespeare confused handsaw with hernshaw. A hernshaw is a young heron. So the expression means to know the difference between the bird of prey and its prey, or between one thing and another.
Of course it may not have been Shakespeare’s error. Perhaps it was a printer’s error that was overlooked. Who knows? It’s not a phrase that I’ve heard, and we studied Macbeth when I was doing English O level, not Hamlet. Still, since the hernshaw phrase was clearly in use in Shakespeare’s time, I may just slip it into one of my books. Hillary Mantel used obscure phrases and words, and she did rather well. It’s a fine line between adding a taste of authenticity, and forcing the reader to keep a dictionary at his, or her side.
Charles Talbut Onions would certainly have come across the handsaw phrase. He published a Shakespeare glossary in 1911, and co-edited Shakespeare’s England: an account of the life and manners of his age. I occasionally refer to Sir Anthony Standen as 001. There is a connection between onions and Ian Fleming, James Bond’s creator. Ian Fleming served in the Royal Navy’s Intelligence branch in World War II and C.T. Onions did the same in World War II.