Where did the phrase "Have gun we'll travel" come from?
921670
I'm dating myself, but here goes: " 'Have Gun Will Travel'  reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land. His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind. A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin. Paladin, Paladin where do you roam?"\nHis first name was never spoken on the show, but we all knew what it was, because it was on his card.
244151
"Although this does have a literal meaning, to threaten with a stick, we in the United States give it much more fanciful interpretations. If we say, "There are more filling stations in town than one can shake a stick at," we mean nothing more than that the town contains an abundance of places at which one may purchase gasoline for one's motorcar. That American usage dates from early in the nineteenth century. One may speculate that it arose from the play at warfare by small boys--George Washington Jones flourishing a triumphant wooden sword over the considerable number of British soldiers who surrendered at Yorktown, more, in fact, than he could wave his "stick" at. then, too, we use the expression to indicate a comparative that may express derogation, and have done so for well over a hundred years. David Crockett, in his *Tour to the North and Down East* (1835) wrote of one place at which he stayed, "This was a temperance house, and there was nothing to treat a friend to that was worth shaking a stick at."
567416
I think that quote came from a philosopher or a writer during the times wherein swords and spears are the only weapons and guns are not yet invented. These kind of men fought their government by writing novels,essays poems,etc. denouncing the dictatorship of their leaders. Instead of a bloody revolt,w/c means taking up arms (swords),they choose to convey their grievances w/c in turn influenced the public. Because of what they learned from the writings.the public revolt causing many governments to topple down.
707655
No -- it refers to a person going crazy and randomly shooting people. It refers specifically to that incident with Mr. Whitman (who was found to have a brain tumor by the way).\n\nIf someone says "I wanted to make sure you're not gonna start firing shots from the clocktower" they are specifically alluding to that event in history.
23392
This is what I found: "It sounds as if this expression for surviving or overcoming nearly insuperable obstacles ought to have a nautical origin, doesn’t it? But there’s no evidence to support that.\n\nIt appears in print around the beginning of the twentieth century. The first example I’ve found is from 1901, but there is a substantial set in the books and newspapers later in that decade, showing that it had by then become widely known. The first form that appears is hell and high water; the form you give, which is now standard, comes along several decades later, together with through hell and high water and variations.\n\nThe setting of many of the earliest examples strongly point to cattle ranching as the origin, in particular the driving of cattle to railheads in the mid West in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1939 Paul Wellman published a book with the title Trampling Herd: the Story of the Cattle Range in America in which he wrote: “ ‘In spite of hell and high water’ is a legacy of the cattle trail when the cowboys drove their horn-spiked masses of longhorns through high water at every river and continuous hell between.”\n\nAn article about an old-time cattleman that appeared in the Washington Post in November 1905 supports this: “He prospered in those palmy days until he became the largest cattle owner in the territory and felt able to take his regular blowout in St Louis, until 1884, when, between the alien land law, drought and rustlers, the “hell and high water of the cattlemen,” he ... walked out of the Kansas City stock yards a few hundred thousand dollars worse off and no cattle worth putting an iron on, much less pulling grass by hand to feed.”"
347795
The term ' Riding Shotgun' refers to the days before automobiles, when horse-drawn wagons traversing the mostly empty spaces between cities would be attacked and robbed by outlaws and hostile Indians. All wagons travelling at the time had a man with a DOUBLE BARREL shotgun that sat on the bench seat to the right of the driver.\n\nThe term today refers to riding in the front passenger side seat.
77225
[A] At least two. However, the more one investigates, the further away a simple answer seems to get.\nThe phrase Katy bar the door! (also as Katy bar the gate!; sometimes written as Katie) is a very American exclamation, more common in the South than elsewhere, meaning that disaster impends—“watch out”, “get ready for trouble” or “a desperate situation is at hand”.\nWhere it comes from is uncertain. Jonathan Lighter, in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, finds a first example from 1902. I’ve done slightly better than that, having found the phrase in a poem called “When Lide Married Him” by James Whitcomb Riley, which was published in a collection called Armazindy in 1894. A young lady marries a known drunkard against family advice and forcibly reforms him. One stanza ends with the line: “When Lide married him, it wuz ‘Katy, bar the door!’ ”, suggesting trouble ensued.\nIt seems clear, though, that this isn’t where the phrase came from. The one useful comment I can find in print is in William and Mary Morris’s book The Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, based on a comment from Nancy Britt of Arkansas. She suggested it came from a traditional ballad. The one she is presumably referring to is medieval Scots, usually entitled Get Up and Bar the Door, which is still widely known and sung. But no version I’ve found mentions Katy anywhere.\nThe wife wants her husband to bar the door because the wind blows in and disturbs her at her cooking. The husband doesn’t want to be bothered to get up and do it. They agree after an argument that the first person who speaks will be the loser and will have to bar the door. Neither speaks, and neither bars the door. At night, robbers enter through the open door and eat the food the wife has prepared. Neither husband nor wife says anything because of their agreement and their stubborn refusal to be the first to give way. However, when the robbers propose to cut off the husband’s beard and kiss the wife (I assume these are euphemisms), the husband rises up in a rage and shouts at the thieves, at which the wife rejoices:\nThen up and started our goodwife,\nGied three skips on the floor:\n“Goodman, you've spoken the foremost word,\nGet up and bar the door.” Though the ballad is actually a wry look at marital obstinacy and its consequences, the most direct lesson is that not barring the door has led them to trouble. Barring the door with the intruders inside wasn’t such a smart move, either. So it is possible that the injunction, “bar the door!”, was adapted from it to suggest there is unpleasantness ahead.\nHowever, many subscribers have pointed to a quite different story, also from Scotland, involving one Catherine Douglas. King James I of Scotland, a cultured and firm ruler, was seen by some of his countrymen as a tyrant. Under attack by his enemies while staying at the Dominican chapter house in Perth on 20 February 1437, he was holed up in a room whose door had the usual metal staples for a wooden bar, but whose bar had been taken away. The legend has it that Catherine Douglas, one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, tried heroically to save James I by barring the door with her naked arm. Her attempt failed, her arm being broken in the process, and the King was murdered, but she was thereafter known as Catherine Barlass.\nDante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a poem about her in 1881, entitled The King’s Tragedy, of which one stanza is:\nLike iron felt my arm, as through\nThe staple I made it pass:—\nAlack! it was flesh and bone—no more!\n’Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,\nBut I fell back Kate Barlass. This is as circumstantial a basis for the expression Katie bar the door as the one above, but it is much stronger in its romantic associations and therefore rather more probable a source.\nHowever, the nearest that Rossetti comes to the conventional expression in the poem is “Catherine, keep the door!”. In its
340296
Ignore the previous answer.  It is incorrect.\n"Buon viaggio" is what an Italian would say and it means "Have a great trip"
646472
A busman's holiday is a phrase used to describe someone doing the same on his day off as he does at work. The origins are obscure and it was thought that it originated in late 19th century London when cab drivers, on their days off, would turn up at the depot to make sure that their horses were being treated well. However as the phrase only enetered popular usage in 1921 this origin is unlikely.\n\nI think that the phrase was originally "buzman's holiday." A "buzman" or "buzzman" in 19th century British criminal slang was a pickpocket, and to "buzz" was to pick someone's pocket. The word came from the common practice of two pickpockets working as a team, one of whom would "buzz the mark," or engage the victim in conversation, while the other picked his pocket. The underworld argot of that time contained a wide range of "buz" words synonymous with "buzman," among them "buznapper" (from "nap" meaning "to snatch"), "buzbloke," and "buzcove." Charles Dickens depicted a "buznapper's academy," or pickpockets' training school, in his "Oliver Twist," run by the dastardly Fagin.\n\nNow the question is, "When is a pickpocket's holiday? When is he off-duty, not cruising for a score?" Simply put, never. Pickpockets are always working to some extent, and I think that's the point of "buzman's holiday." I think the phrase probably arose as a sardonic comment on the voracity of criminals, and gradually spread as a metaphor for anyone who seemed unable to "put down his tools." Only when the phrase reached the stratum of polite society where "buzmen" were unknown did the heart-warming story of "busmen" arise from an attempt to explain the origins of the phrase.
325501
"...I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, - and I won't be laid a hand on.  I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."\n\nJ. B. Books, from the movie THE SHOOTIST
624846
I have a reference from 1997 that already says it is old:\nhttp://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/august97/terror01.html\n\nThe fact that numerous sources fail to give the original source of the quote suggests that no-one actually knows when it was first used.
141560
Nobody actually knows where that phrase comes from.  There is an urban legend about where it came from that can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm
221176
I somehow dont think this would be a very good idea, there is way too much hostility and road rage in the U.S that if one angers too much he will have his gun readily at hand.
383625
My guess is that it has been used extensively by many. It is commonly an introduction to something else the speaker wants to say. For instance: "I have traveled far and wide, still, human nature is pretty much the same wherever I go."\n\nA favorite travel quotation: "A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."\n--George Moore, The Brook Kerith (1916)
159258
Carry across and carry into, from the Latin "portare", meaning "to carry."
1138083
I don't remember his name but i recall hearing about a guy in the army in the vietnam era who didn't fight because the army kept him in America because he was such a good shooter it made good PR for the army. I remember being told that he could toss asprin in the air and shoot it with a .22.
80040
Poor Mexico - so close to the United States, so far from God,’ runs a popular Mexican saying. This leads me to believe it is a 'public domain' quote, the origin unknown, or unremembered