organ grinder

An organ grinder with a monkey in 19th-century Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

From the repetitive grinding involved in playing a barrel organ. In figurative senses, from the common 19th-century practice of training monkeys to dance to an organ grinder's music in order to perform on the street and solicit donations and spare change.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɔːɡən ˌɡɹaɪndə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɔɹɡən ˌɡɹaɪndəɹ/

• Audio (US)

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• Hyphenation: or‧gan grind‧er

organ grinder (plural organ grinders)

1. The player of a barrel organ.

   Synonym: barrel organist

   • 1903 October, Jack London, chapter XXIII, in The People of the Abyss, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round.

   • 1903–1906, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Easter of the Soul”, in The Voice of the City, complete edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company, published 1908, →OCLC, page 141:

     The organ-grinders were at work; but they were always precocious harbingers. It was near enough spring for them to go penny-hunting when the skating ball dropped at the park.

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LXXXVI, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

     “You should read Spanish,” he said. “It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood.”

   • 1919 October 20, Virginia Woolf, Night and Day, London: Duckworth and Company […], →OCLC:

     Thus the vision of humanity appeared to be in some way connected with Bloomsbury, and faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated organ-grinder in Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously; […]

   • 1929, George Orwell, “Beggars in London”, in An Inquiry into “Civic Progress” in England:

     Those who cannot play any instrument wheel a gramophone through the streets on a barrow, but the largest number of these street musicians are organ grinders.

2. (figurative) The person who is in charge, rather than a lackey or representative; the person truly responsible for another's actions.

   Synonym: the organ grinder, not the monkey

   I want to speak to the organ grinder, not the monkey.

• organ-grinder

• the organ grinder, not the monkey