The urbane Irish nationalist Robert Wilson Lynd published an article, "A Defence of Superstition", in the 1 October 1921 edition of the New Statesman, a British liberal political and cultural magazine, regarding the theatre as the second-most superstitious institution in England, after horse racing. The German-language term continues to mean "good luck" but is still not specific to the theatre. For example, Luftwaffe pilots are reported as using the phrase Hals- und Beinbruch to wish each other luck. Most commonly favored as a credible theory by etymologists and other scholars, the term was possibly a loan translation from the German phrase Hals- und Beinbruch, literally "neck and leg(bone) break", itself a loan translation from, and pun on, a Yiddish phrase (Yiddish: הצלחה און ברכה, romanized: hatsloche un broche, lit.'success and blessing', Hebrew: hatzlacha u-bracha), a wish for good luck, because of the Yiddish phrase's humorously similar pronunciation to the unrelated German phrase. Non-theatrical origins Yiddish-German pun theory Among professional dancers, the traditional saying is not "break a leg", but the French word " merde". Though the term likely originates in German, the English expression is first attributed in the 1930s or possibly 1920s, originally documented without specifically theatrical associations. An ironic or non-literal saying of uncertain origin (a dead metaphor), "break a leg" is commonly said to actors and musicians before they go on stage to perform or before an audition. " Break a leg" is a typical English idiom used in the context of theatre or other performing arts to wish a performer " good luck". For other uses, see Break a leg (disambiguation).
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