Go Against The Grain
The first person to say “against the grain” was lying. Not figuratively. He was coaching other people to lie, and the phrase was the lie.
On this episode of Appraise The Phrase, Mario and Twenty are joined by Kayla, founder of Kinara Bookstore in Tulsa, to unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of “go against the grain.” It debuts in Shakespeare's Coriolanus around 1607, in the mouth of Sicinius — a tribune coaching Roman citizens to claim they'd been pressured into their vote, and that speaking up went against the grain. They were doing exactly what authority wanted…
The skinny
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