Who taught: Phil

Play by ear (source : http://www.iphoneappsdude.com/)

Phil and I are close friends and hang out often. We play soccer and squash together and sometimes work at Commonplace coffee and also eat. Last week, we were talking about having dinner together and play a board game afterward in my place. Since he was also expecting his friends’ visit, he was not able to confirm whether he could make it or not.

As we were talking about, what I said to him was, “Let’s play by ear. You can come by with your friends if they are fine. Call or text me on Saturday.”

As I used the expression, “play by ear,” Phil told me that it was a perfect usage of it. So happy to hear that! However, that made me think. I have been using this expression for a while but never really thought about its origin.

The following definition that I found from The Phrase Finder explains a lot.

Initially, this referred to the playing of music without reference to printed notation. More recently it is also used figuratively to mean ‘handle a situation in an impromptu manner’, i.e. without reference to pre-determined rules or guidelines.

Not surprisingly, if you google ‘play by ear,’ you will see many images that says like how to play piano by ear, etc.

FYI, the first record of its usage is in an 1839 edition of The Edinburgh Review.

And, people in the U.S. started to use this expression in the 20th century in the context of sports to describe players who did something in an unplanned way.

So, what do you think? My usage was pretty good there, wasn’t it? But, in reality, I am not a big fan of playing things by ear. I want things really really well organized. The more you play things by ear, the higher things would go not as you want. So, a piece of advice: Plan things ahead and play by the plan!