Left Holding the Bag

You may know that the expression to leave someone holding the bag is negative. It means to abandon people; to force responsibility or blame onto them.

But you might think that’s because the bag is full.

For example, imagine that you and your friends are cat burglars, and you just stole a bunch of jewels. Suddenly, you hear sirens. Your friends take off, leaving you behind. When the police arrive, you’re left holding the bag—full of jewels—and clearly guilty.

Makes sense, right?

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Unfortunately, that’s not how the phrase got its meaning. Instead, this idiom grew out of an earlier expression from about 1600: to give one the bag. That expression referred to someone being left with an empty bag after everyone else removed the good stuff.  

Empty or full, this expression has never fallen out of style.

An 1897 weekly used the term when writing about Kansas farmers deceived by a “rain-maker.” The farmers paid $500—about $12,000 today—for him to produce a downpour. A tabernacle was built. The performance was held. The rain didn’t fall.

“The parties who put up the cash were left holding the bag,” according to the weekly.

A 2015 article in the Washington Post uses the same phrase. This time, it’s Virginia taxpayers who were “left holding the bag.” The state paid a private company millions to build a 55-mile toll road. Because the state lacked federal construction permits, the road was never built.

Sounds like Virginia is definitely holding an empty bag.

So that’s your tidbit for today: If you leave someone holding the bag, you desert them and burden them with an unwelcome responsibility.

Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com or @DragonflyEdit.

Sources

Ammer, Christine. Leave holding the bag. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 

Ayto, John. Holding. Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2010. 

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