I need to get on my soapbox
by bboyneko 3 Replies latest jw friends
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claudia
Do you know where the tearm "soap box" origionated? Does anyone know?
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COMF
Claudia, here's the story I have been told about the term "soapbox." I wasn't there, but it sounds perfectly true to me.
Back in the early part of the 20th century, people used to regularly gather in the public parks on Sunday afternoons for a community association. Most of the town would be out and about, in the park or strolling the streets. In those days before electronic media, such gatherings were a good time for campaigners for various charities or movements to try to drum up support for their cause. It was quite common to see some person enthusiastically shouting out rhetoric to a small crowd of curious onlookers gathered around him.
In those days, like most other goods, soap was delivered to the stores in sturdy wooden boxes. At some point, apparently somebody dragged out an empty delivery box from behind a store and stood up on it to be better seen and heard; the box serving as a temporary, makeshift podium for the duration of the guy's speech. For a few moments, there in the park, an anonymous average Joe could become a public speaker expousing the advantages of his personal vision or decrying the folly of another's. And when the speech was done, he would get back down off his "soap box," out of public view, and return to the obscurity from which he had suddenly appeared.
So the expression "getting up on his soapbox" came to refer to anyone who is not a professional politician or speaker, but who momentarily takes on a tone of lecturing or rallying for a cause.
COMF
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claudia
Ah it does make sense. thanks Comf, I enjoy learning things like that, I will try to find a site.