Fill Your Boots With Anything You Like

To fill one’s boots is to take as much of something as you want, such as when dinner is served at an all you can eat buffet. You’d ‘fill your boots’ (often said as ‘fill yer boots’) and take as much as you want — help yourself — don’t hold back, and so on. Basically, it is both a phrase of encouragement and an invitation to over indulge.

But others say this phrase actually refers to getting a fright or being so filled with fear that you, well, wet yourself (or more), and fill your boots that way. Which is something no one should be encouraged in to doing under any circumstances...

Oh, and of course, this is not to be confused with ‘filling someone’s shoes’ in the sense of replacing them, i.e. if a respected work colleague leaves, you might remark that it will “it will be difficult to fill your shoes”.

We’re talking about boots here, and the thing we’re filling them with is definitely not feet, that much we can agree on.

So where did it come from?

Well, where this expression came from is anyone’s guess. Like a lot of idioms in the English language, its meaning has been changed over time, and its origin has been so filled with myth that its hard to believe some of the stories.

For example, my understanding of the phrase (coming from a coal mining town) was that coal miners, at the end of a shift, would often take a day’s worth of coal home with them, and with no where else to put it, would literally fill their boots with their stuff and walk home. Seems a bit too whimsical to me, and no where online backs this theory up.

The earliest known record of the phrase comes from old navy expression: “dig in and fill yer boots!” meaning, help yourself, either if dinner or alcohol was being served. There is an account from 1840 which chronicles a sailor slipping off his shoe and dipping it in to a barrel of rum to drink from — so literally filling his boots with booze and getting blind drunk. Simpler times, eh?

Another theory suggests it was actually related to English Cavaliers who, when inside drinking, had the option of relieving themselves in their own knee high boots rather than stepping outside, thus literally filling their boots.

The most likely of origins, however, come from war time looting. One such account published in 1848 is a British soldier’s account of looting from the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, this particular Brit was quick to point out only the French did the looting, but the suggestion was the soldiers, on capturing a city or town, would steal whatever they could find, hiding it in the lining of their jackets, in their pockets, and of course, in their loose fitting boots. Helpful especially if a commander wants to discourage such a thing, or enemies advanced and took prisoners, being unlikely to search in a soldier’s boots.

Does it stand up today?

Sure, in the sense that it has many meanings and it is still in frequent use by English speakers (particularly in the UK).

But this is certainly a good example of an expression that used to have a quite literal meaning, no matter which origin story you believe, which now lives in the figurative sense — no one is literally filling their boots with anything these days thankfully (or at least not many normal people). There is less looting happening, less boot wearing in general, and we tend not to come across barrels of rum with no drinking vessel at hand.

Plus, you know, we have pockets and backpacks and things now.

But despite its multiple interpretations, most will understand what you mean if you shout, with a table full of food in front of you, “fill your boots”. No one will take that as an invitation to soil themselves, or fill their shoes with food, or start stealing the cutlery and fine china, but simply to take as much as they want of the want and help themselves.

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Sources

• https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/51/messages/288.html
• https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fill-your-boots
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2019_July_3