Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and someone this week pointed out that the weather here changes on a dime. This made us both wonder: where does that ridiculous expression come from?
The original expression probably didn’t involve dimes at all, but had something to do with sixpences or five-cent pieces. The idea behind it was that a small-denomination coin doesn’t take up much space, so anything that turns or changes on a dime does so rapidly. Early on, it usually applied to things that take up physical spac. Cars, dancers, and baseball players could do things on dimes, meaning either with speed and precision or, in the case of baseball players, without covering all the ground they were supposed to. This latter use is probably how the expression was popularized, although its meaning subsequently changed.
What was once a fantastic and fresh metaphor is now a cliché. This is a common fate of particularly catchy expressions and should be an encouragement: maybe you can come up with the next popular idiom.
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