“My innocent friend,” replied the citizen, “the term does not refer exactly to paint and brushes. Do they paint the buildings, or sidewalks, or what? I don’t see any red around Detroit to speak of. “Almost every paper I pick up has something in it about somebody painting the town red. This allusion to festive lights illuminating a town was perhaps reinforced by the connotations of energy and excitement attached to the colour red, as exemplified by the beginning of Painting it Red, published in The Wheeling Daily intelligencer (Wheeling, West Virginia) of 8 th September 1884:Ī citizen who was waiting at the corner of Jefferson avenue and Wayne street yesterday was accosted by a man about 27 years old, who said he wanted a little information. 15.-The Democrats of Crockett County had a splendid procession, cannonade and painted the town red with fireworks, and shouted themselves hoarse. – On 16 th November 1884, The Daily American (Nashville, Tennessee) reported:īells, Tenn., Nov. The large crowd in waiting became hilarious, and it was proposed to “paint the town red” by means of a torchlight procession. – On 5 th November 1884, the Hawaiian Gazette (Honolulu, Hawaii) reported that, after the announcement of the result of the local vote for U.S. The two following passages support this hypothesis: My hypothesis is that the phrase originated in the image of a torchlit procession or/and of a firework display that illuminate(s) a town.
TIME TO PAINT THE TOWN RED FULL
Mountain Dew, my boy, is the liquid representative of a fiery furnace it is the elixir of a West Virginia Legislator’s life he would rather do without his dinner than his Mountain Dew, and whenever he wants to paint the town red or paralyze things by making a flowery speech, he gets gloriously full of Mountain Dew.ĭo these men paint the town red and make flowery speeches very often? Well, slightly its about the liveliest creature you ever saw when it is invited to take a little Mountain Dew. This, my boy, is a West Virginia Legislator. The second-earliest occurrence of the phrase that I have found from Legislative Primer, a satirical dialogue published in The Weekly Register (Point Pleasant, West Virginia) of 18 th January 1882: James Crockett, who has only been out of the county jail a short while, was likewise complimented for “ painting the town red,” and he is also visiting out of the city. Tommy Price, an ex-convict, left Owenton because the boys about town took him to the woods and flogged him. The earliest instance that I have found is from one of the unconnected paragraphs making up the column The Commonwealth, in The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) of 3 rd November 1881:
Of American-English origin, the colloquial phrase to paint the town red means to enjoy oneself flamboyantly, to go on a boisterous or exuberant spree.