World Wide Words

From the Questions & Answers section

Tub thumping

Q From Donna Marie Watson, New Jersey: In a magazine article about Australia, the term tub thumping was used. My students asked me what it meant, and I couldn’t figure it out. Any idea?

A Many americans are more familiar with Bible-thumping, which has much the same sense. The phrase originally referred to a preacher of a type still familiar: one who does so in an aggressive way and who bangs on the pulpit to give emphasis. At the time the expression was first recorded — in the Cromwellian period of English history, roughly the 1650s — the allusion was to nonconformist preachers. There may be a connection here with the literal tub-thumping of an outdoor orator using an inverted tub as an informal lectern, or perhaps the practice of converting wash-tubs into improvised drums during processions or demonstrations.