2007 photo of US soldiers of the First Cavalry Division toeing the line. A line of soldiers standing at attention, wearing camouflage uniforms, boots, and cavalry spurs (the latter worn for effect rather than any practical purpose).
24 June 2022
To toe the line or toe the mark is to meet a standard or come into conformance with expectations, to obey. The metaphor from which the phrase springs is that of soldiers standing or marching in formation, their toes arrayed along an imaginary line—the earliest appearances of the phrase are in military contexts. Often dictionaries will give the metaphor of runners at the start of the race, and while that is an apt metaphor, it’s not the original one. The phrase is often reanalyzed and misspelled as tow the line, which draws upon a different, and in this case nonsensical, metaphor, that of pulling a rope.
We see the military context in the earliest use of the phrase in a 1738 account of life in the British army by John Railton. In this passage, Railton describes the qualities that a good military leader should possess and opines that a good leader is not just a bully:
To deserve the Name of a complete, thorough-disciplin’d Soldier, a Man ought to be endued with more extraordinary Qualifications than those of crying, Silence, you Dogs, toe the Line, you Puppies; Corporals, take such and such Rascals to the Black-hole, or Savoy, see that they are double iron’d, let them have nothing but Bread and Water.
And the underlying metaphor is made clear in the following passage, which is from a drill manual written by a Thomas Pickering in 1775 for the fledgling colonial militias being formed to fight the British in the American Revolution. Here he describes how soldiers should execute a wheeling motion while marching:
Illustration from Pickering’s 1775 Easy Plan of Discipline for a Militia showing the lines soldiers must toe when marching in a wheeling motion.
The different lengths of their steps are shewn by the lines c g, c h, &c. for at their first step they must all bring their toes to the line c g, at the second step they toe the line c h, at the next the line c i, and so on, till they all arrive at c m at the same time.
And we see toe the mark used in a metaphorical context in this piece from the Washington Federalist of 23 January 1802:
Doctor Eustis, with some impatience, said the Tripolitan bill must pass, expense or no expense, or democracy was knocked on the head in New England. Mr. Varnum said nothing could be expected unless the chairman of the select committee who brought the bill could toe the mark well. Could any man, said he, lighting up a smile on his delightful countenance, could any man but myself carried through the army bill?
A year or so later, the Connecticut Courant published a 19 December 1803 letter by a Roger Skinner which describes a 1799 conversation in which the phrase was used. We have to take the 1799 date with a grain of salt. Memories of the exact language that had been used in a conversation are always suspect, and Roger Skinner was not present for this particular conversation, making it at best a second-hand recollection. The General Skinner mentioned in the conversation is Roger Skinner’s father, who had expressed doubt about the Adams administration to a group of Adams supporters. If the phrase was indeed actually used in the 1799 conversation, the fact that these are military men would be telling. It seems plausible that Roger Skinner had heard his father use the phrase on other occasions and inserted it here as words his father would likely have said:
The first word that was uttered after he came in was by Gen. Tracy to Mr. Allen, “Gen. Skinner does not seem to toe the mark with us.”
Finally, we see toe the line used in a New Year’s poem published in Maine’s Portland Gazette of 4 January 1813. The use of chalk’d gives away the metaphor:
Wonders quite curious—and new;
The budget open’d, out these flew
Accounts of battles—horrid rumours,
With patent medicine for tumors,
Law matters, Puffendorf and Vattel
Concerning Nations when in battle.
Also new rules to toe the line,
Chalk’d by the watchful SIXTY NINE,
Shewing to Irishman the risk he
Incurs in taking grog or whiskey.
I don’t know what the sixty-nine refers to here. If anyone has any idea (and no, it certainly does not mean THAT; get your mind out of the gutter), I would love to hear it.
Sources:
“For the Washington Federalist.” Washington Federalist (Georgetown, District of Columbia), 23 January 1802, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“New Year’s Address for 1813.” Portland Gazette (Maine), 4 January 1813, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. toe, v.
Pickering, Timothy. An Easy Plan of Discipline for a Militia. Salem, Massachusetts: Samuel and Ebenezer Hall, 1775, 53n. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Railton, John. The Army Regulator: or, the Military Adventures of Mr. John Railton. London: W. Warner, et al., 1738, 120. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Skinner Roger. Letter (19 December 1803). Connecticut Courant (Hartford), 8 February 1804, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Tréguer, Pascal. “Meaning and Origin of the Phrase ‘To Toe the Line.’” Wordhistories.net. 2 April 2017.
Image credits: Nathan Hoskins, 2007, US Army photo, public domain image; Detail of Plate #1 of Pickering’s An Easy Plan of Discipline for a Militia, 1775, public domain image.