What is the meaning of the phrase ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’?
Alertly eager, lively, full of energy and enthusiasm.
What is the origin of the phrase ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’?
The component parts of the expression ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’, that is ‘bright eyed’ and ‘bushy tailed’ date back quite some time. For instance, the ‘bright-eyed’ part, which is meant literally, comes from the late 1500s.
Meanwhile the ‘bushy tailed’ expression refers to the image of a healthy, spirited squirrel. The tail of a squirrel fluffs up when the animal becomes lively, excited and alert.
There’s an instance of the phrases ‘bright eyed’ and ‘bushy tailed’ being used in the same passage but not next to each other in an article about hunting season titled A Bunch of Golden Rod, which was published in The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana) on 4th November 1888.
The longer phrase, combining the two shorter phrases to make ‘bright eyed, bushy tailed’ was in a children’s story called Tommy Snooks and Bessie Brooks published in The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) on 3rd December 1916.
This was followed by the use of said phrase in an article about a squirrel in the paper The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) on the 29th November 1920.
The phrases ‘bright eyed’ and ‘bushy tailed’ have also been used to describe other animals. For instance, in The Democratic Herald (Charleston, Mississippi) on 22nd May 1902, the terms were used to describe a rabbit. Then on 17th April 1904 they were used to describe a little red fox in The Pittsburgh Post (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
The earliest recorded use I’ve found of the expression ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’ being used figuratively was in The Sunday Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) on the 28th July 1940, when it was used to describe a self-righting, self-bailing lifeboat.
The two terms were once conflated with the synonym ‘full of beans’ when describing rattlesnakes in The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) on Monday 24th January 1944.
Later that same year, the phrase ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’ was used to figuratively describe a human character on a comic strip called Smiling Jack published in The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) on Tuesday 28th March 1944.
