If someone tells you you're "up to snuff," go ahead and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back, because that means you're hitting the mark. And if they tell you you're "up to scratch," that's another opportunity for praise, because you're meeting expectations. Unless you're standing in a boxing ring, but we'll get to that.
The "snuff" in "up to snuff" came into English from Dutch in the late 1600s. It referred to powdered or pulverized tobacco that was inhaled through the nose, which we think sounds like a terrible idea. Today "snuff" can also refer to tobacco that you put between your teeth and gum. The phrase "up to snuff" appeared in the early 1800s and meant "sharp or knowing or not easily deceived." Early on, this slangy phrase could also mean "up to the required or usual standard" which is how many of us use it today.
The first citation of "up to snuff" in the Oxford English Dictionary is from John Poole's 1810 play "Hamlet Travestie," a parody of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The line is "Zooks, he's up to snuff." Poole didn't expect his audience to know what "up to snuff" meant and, at the end of the play, includes an amusing, made-up debate between commentators about what it means.
Merriam-Webster's website has an earlier example of "up to snuff" from 1807, but it's from an old London newspaper and is partially illegible. The scholar Dave Wilton also has two early examples on this word origins website, one from 1809 and another from 1810.
What's clear is that this phrase quickly became popular once it showed up in the language. Charles Dickens even used "up to snuff" in his writing, including his first novel The Pickwick Papers. What's not clear is why this phrase means what it does. Some people think it could refer to the high one gets from a hit of snuff, while others think it could refer to having a good nose.
Another phrase with the same meaning as "up to snuff" is "up to scratch." This one comes from the sport of boxing. The "scratch" was a line drawn across a boxing ring that specified where the boxers had to stand at the beginning of each round. If a boxer was "up to the scratch," it meant they were able to keep going. If not, they were done.
Since we were already talking about tobacco this week, we decided it was a good time to also look at the phrase "close, but no cigar." To hear that discussion, listen to the audio above.
