" get around a leg " is one bit of performer argot that has leaked into the mainstream . primitively , it was used by thespian and musicians to bid their colleagues good luck before going on microscope stage . Today , even people outside the entertainment world know the import of the dialect , but few people belike know where it comes from .
The common account behind " break-dance a leg " is that it began as a replacement for " good luck"—a phrase that ’s actually considered bad luck if address out loud in theater . The superstitious notion is existent , but it does n’t explain why actors started wishing each other corporeal harm rather .
harmonize toGrammarist , the saying in its modern form originated as an in - joke in theaters in the1920s . This hypothesis states that rookie performers waiting in the wings teased the well - temper pros by telling them to " break a peg , " which would have tolerate the standby to take their place .
Another theory trace the idiom even further back in clock time . In Old English , breaking a stage could have draw someone bending a leg , as in a curtsey or arc . rather of tongue-in-cheek wish well someone to get too wound to do , this version of the phrase could have been a fashion to advance actors to make it to the end of a successful show .
Some other potential etymological explanations pertain to theaudience membersrather than the performers . In Elizabethan England , spectator would sometimes smash their butt — including the chair legs — on the ground in place of clapping . interview in Ancient Greece were cognise to stomp their feet alternatively of clapping their hand ( though hopefully not to the pointedness of transgress them ) .
Regardless of its peradventure sincere beginnings , " burst a leg " would eventually turn into a sarcastic theater joke . The mod definition of the phrase was printed in a 1948 issue of theCharleston Gazette , likely after it had been already used by performers for years . It appears in a list of act superstition : " Another is that one player should not wish another undecomposed lot before a performance but say instead ' I hope you break a peg . ' "
There is no one verifiable parentage of the saying , and even some performers may not be aware of the rationality for repeating it . If you ’re new to the stagecoach , just know that you should n’t take the seemingly disdainful set phrase in person .
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