Getting into trouble is a classic expression in every sense. There are many examples of the use of this phrase for centuries and we have surely heard and used it on numerous occasions. But what does this phrase mean and what is its origin?
To begin with, the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) offers a concise definition of the expression. Getting into trouble is a colloquial verbal phrase that means “to get involved in what does not concern you or what does not matter to you.” There are those who add that this interference always leads to problems and no benefits.
It is an idiom, since the meaning of the expression is not deduced from the words that form it. So, let’s start by deciphering the most complex word. Going back to the dictionary, we obtain that a vara is “a measure of length that was used in different regions of Spain with different values, ranging between 768 and 912 millimeters. In fact, a piece of cloth is also called vara. or a bar with that measurement.
Thus, eleven varas is equivalent to between nine and ten meters. Returning to the expression, we are faced with a shirt of enormous proportions.
And who would wear a garment that measures 10 meters? The answer, according to the version most widely spread by experts, is found in the Middle Ages and specifically in a tradition.
When someone in medieval Castile adopted a child, an adoption ceremony was usually held. This consisted of “simulating childbirth by inserting the adopter’s head into a very wide sleeve of his shirt and, taking it out through the other (for this an eleven-vara shirt was needed), he gave him a kiss after which he was adopted as a son,” explains Ortega Morán in one of his Capsules of the Language.
The Mexican writer adds that getting into trouble was assuming the problems that parenting entailed by one’s own decision, not by necessity. Other authors maintain, however, that the problems were for the children, who sometimes fell into the hands of people who were harmful to minors. In any case, with the passage of time the expression began to be used to indicate any type of situation in which a person unnecessarily complicates their existence.
For his part, Alberto Buitrago, in his Dictionary of sayings and phrases, emphasizes that this ceremony is documented in several European countries, giving rise to sayings that are now out of use such as “Entrale through the sleeve and take it out through the big head” or “Put it in through the cuff and come out through the breast (through the headboard)”.
About the phrase, José María Iribarren remembers in his work El porqué de los sayings that the number 11 was used at the time to refer to an indefinite but abundant quantity. Hence, that figure and no other was consolidated in the expression. Getting into a big deal means getting into a lot of trouble.
Although the version of the adoption ceremony is the most widespread, it does not convince all experts. Alfred López contributes two more versions about the origin of the expression on his blog. On the one hand, he argues that getting into a eleven-varas shirt could be the variation of another old phrase, Getting into a eleven-varas reed. A reed was a kind of shelter made of reeds for the shepherd and his livestock. Furthermore, the author focuses on another meaning of shirt: “part of the wall, towards the field”; In this sense, climbing a 10-meter fortification was already a considerable obstacle for anyone who wanted to assault a castle.
