Lost
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes, long ago of Como. Park, emails:
People keep using the phrase “go to the mattress” when talking about fighting. “Republicans must go to the mattress over this issue.”No dummy, it’s “mat,” as in wrestling mat, as in “take your opponent to the mat to pin him.” Didn’t your high school have a wrestling team?But of course some idiot didn’t understand that 20 years ago and wrote the dialogue wrong in a movie. So now the internet thinks that’s the origin of the phrase. Or possibly that it relates to 15th century Italians who hung mattresses on the walls to deflect cannon fire. Really? You figure people today know so much about Renaissance warfare that they use it everyday speech? Ridiculous.How does society recover a lost idiom?Joe Doakes
By doing more wrestling.
(And I think it was Clemenza, not Puzo, that got the term wrong. Which, if true, I think is hilarious).
September 24th, 2025 at 6:52 am
No, dummy. “Going to the mattresses” referred to hunkering down due to / in advance of a gang war. “The mattresses” referred to the furnishings of the safe houses or apartments the crews would retreat to in advance of a fight. It basically means, “Get to safety. Get ready for war.”
These are the kind of misunderstandings that can occur when you live in a state that has like 7 Italian people in it.
September 26th, 2025 at 4:54 pm
We might smile and say “you know, it actually is kinda nice that as it’s been decades since Giuliani and company shut down a great portion of the Mob, that we don’t instinctively get Mob references like we did when ‘The Godfather’ had recently been in the theaters.”.
At least that’s my take. And I know at least three of the seven.