An idiom, by definition, is a phrase in which the overall meaning is understood separately from the individual meanings of the words. Some idioms are so ingrained in our collective vocabulary that we never think about what the true meanings are. Consider the idiom “break the ice.” This expression — meaning “to say or do something to relieve tension” — might seem like a modern invention designed for cocktail parties or business meetings, but it actually has roots in the Italian Renaissance.
For the origin of this well-loved idiom, we look to Desiderius Erasmus, a 15th-century Dutch theologian. Erasmus recorded a collection of over 4,000 annotated Greek and Latin proverbs (idioms) in his book Adagia. “Break the ice” is among these expressions, recorded in the first installment of the book as proverb No. 374. Erasmus credits this saying to an Italian humanist by the name of Francesco Filelfo. In his own words, Erasmus states that the expression “break the ice” means “to open the way and to be the first in beginning a task.” He says it is “derived from boatmen who send one of their number ahead to break up the ice on a frozen river and open the way for others.” In a modern twist, ships specifically designed for breaking up channel ice are dubbed “icebreakers.”
William Barker — a 20th-century editor who compiled the work of Erasmus in The Adages of Erasmus — believes that Erasmus was citing Filelfo’s Epistolae, letters addressed to the leading humanists and lords of Italy. They exemplify the political and literary goings-on of the Italian Renaissance. Today, one volume of these letters is preserved in the renowned Uffizi Library in Florence, Italy. The specific expression that Filelfo uses in the letters is glaciem fregi, meaning “I have broken the ice.” Barker also notes that unlike nearly all of the other proverbs listed by Erasmus, “break the ice” is not found in any classical Latin literature in the figurative sense — adding an air of mystery to the origin of the expression.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, when the expression first emerged in English, it was used to reference the beginning of an undertaking, especially faced with difficulty or resistance, akin to the difficulty of literally breaking through ice in water. Oxford’s first citation of the phrase is from the mid-16th-century divorce papers for Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon: “This reuerend father..chaunced..to be one of the first that brake the yse, and [showed]..the inconvenience that followed.”
By the late 18th century, the expression had evolved slightly to mean “to do or say something to relieve tension or get conversation going” — the same manner in which we often use it today. We can see this usage in a 1795 collection of poems by Samuel Jackson Pratt, titled Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia: “Notwithstanding..,there is an air of distance, reserve, and even coldness, they are all.., replete with an anxious desire to break the ice.” While business meetings and orientation halls are less fanciful circumstances, the idiom’s meaning still stands, two centuries later.
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