What does through the grapevine mean

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Your English. No comments. Related articles. Bee in , between Placerville and Virginia City. The lines along the mountainous parts of the route were actually strung on trees instead of poles, which sagged and wound along the ground in many places, resembling the trailing California wild grapevines. Messages were frequently delayed and had to be taken up by the Pony Express. This kind of thing caused the grapevine telegraph to become the butt of jokes and California and Nevada newspapers took it up as a symbol of unreliable information and outdated information, accusing opponents of running a grapevine telegraph, which implied that their information could be a bit fresher.

However, the grapevine and the idea of hearing something through the grapevine was in use before , and Civil War soldiers took up the phrase to differentiate between information that came by telegraph and that which came by person-to-person communication. The hanging and coiling telegraph wires may have helped the expression along, but the expression has actually been used before this, in connection to the Underground Railroad. Grapevines may have been used as a substitute for rope, presumably for clotheslines, so that the two expressions came to be used at the same time.

Different color clothes hung out on clotheslines were used as visual codes, which passed information along the network. This could be used not only for helping slaves escape, but for espionage, and Union Captain John Truesdale describes such use in his work, The Blue Coats. The same dwellings would serve as shelter for the fleeing slaves along their journey, who would be allowed rest and refreshment, and then spirited along by night to the next post. All Rights Reserved.

Please contact for permissions. Palmatier, Robert A. It soon became clear though that close communities already had effective word-of-mouth communications. Soon after the telegraph was invented the term 'grapevine telegraph' was coined - first recorded in a US dictionary in This distinguished the new direct 'down-the-wire' telegraph from the earlier method, which was likened to the coiling tendrils of a vine.

It's clear that the allusion was to interactions amongst people who could be expected to be found amongst grapevines, that is, the rural poor. In , The Reno Evening Gazette ran an article about a bumper corn and grape crop.