QUEER THE PITCH

THIS IDIOM means to spoil somebody’s chance of doing something or making a deed more dif f icult for someone, secretly or maliciously.

E x a m p l e : I n t o d a y ’s c o r p o r a t e world, people want to get ahead of one another by queering others’ pitch . They do not believe in coop - e r a t i o n a ny m o r e . O r, H e q u e e r e d my pitch by a sk in g f o r p ro m otio n before I did.

‘ Queer ’ has been used as a verb m e a ning ‘ to sp oil ’ sin ce th e e a rly 19 th centur y and the ‘pitch’ used in the phrase is referred to as the place where street per formers stationed themselves or the site of a trader ’s stall. These two collectively give the meaning of this phrase. The phrase was frequently used among travelling theatre groups, to mean ‘distract the paying audience from the show’.

Dire c ting th e p ublic away f rom one trader’s business towards one’s own was an important part of street trading . There was and still is an es t a b lish e d p e ck in g o rd e r of p ositions where a stallholder may ‘pitch up’ on any site.

It is dif f icult to explain but none the less an established fac t that a crowd, when entering an open space through an entrance, will veer to the right. The stallholders whose stalls languish on the lef t-hand side were likely to tr y a ny s o r t of ‘ q u e e r in g ’ of the right-hand ground to redirect traf f ic .

The phrase has been used to indicate various kinds of misfor tun e, but its predominant use has been to refer to f inancial dif f icult y.

It was f irst recorded, i n the vernacular sp e e ch of 19 th centur y London, in The Swell’s Night Guide, 18 46.

“Nanty coming it on a pall, or wid cracking to queer a pitch.”