Thing Possibly Not To Get On Today: the bandwagon.

 I was discussing the positioning of my latest book the other day and my agent said it's definitely not YA [Young Adult] - it isn't miserable or about gender fluidity.

And I thought: what is a bandwagon, exactly?

Slightly disappointingly, a bandwagon turns out to be a wagon that carries, yes, a band. This band is of the musical kind. Highly decorated and noisy processions featuring a bandwagon used to parade through towns to whip up audiences for visiting circuses. 

photo by Freekee

This was a definitely American phenomenon, and the history of the word gets more American yet, because these bandwagons were also used to publicise political rallies (Britain doesn't do that kind of thing: we'd find any kind of obvious enthusiasm for a politician deeply embarrassing) and so jumping on the bandwagon came to mean hitching a ride with anything already popular and successful.

Of course there's nothing wrong with jumping on the bandwagon. 

Well, there isn't as long, obviously, as you have something new, or at least deeply sincere, to say.

But then that lets most of us out, doesn't it.

Thing Possibly Not To Get On Today: the bandwagon. The first record of this word comes from 1849, and by 1890 it had its joining-in-a-craze meaning. The word band comes from the Old French word banda, and might be originally from the Gothic bandwa, which is basically the same word as banner. The word wagon comes from the Dutch wagen.