There’s ‘the rub’ – but where did it come from?

‘So, are the Tories going to win the election?’ asked my husband after listening to the engaging psephologist Sir John Curtice. I’d been paying attention, but was distracted by Sir John’s phrase ‘the rub in the ointment’. Typical of extempore speech, this a metaphorical mixture of the fly in the ointment and the rub.

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Ointment might suggest a rub like Vicks VapoRub, which originated in America in 1905. The Oxford English Dictionary says such a rub is likely to be a liniment, though I can’t quite see the difference. I do remember Sloan’s Liniment, its label bearing an engraved portrait of the thick-moustached inventor, Dr Earl Sloan (another American, a doctor by courtesy).

How much a fly spoils your metaphorical ointment is not clear. Is it like a fly in the soup, a slug in the salad, a snail in the ginger beer? It relates to Ecclesiastes (10:1): ‘Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.’