All the rain this past week and hearing Reinke Irrigation’s slogan (More right than ran) had me thinking. How can 5 inches of rain in less than hour right be right? 

 

Meaning: perfect, well, absolutely right

 

Origin: There have been expressions starting right as ... since medieval times, always in the sense of something being satisfactory, safe, secure or comfortable. 

 

1546 - Right as a line

 

1400 - Right as an adamant, where an adamant was a lodestone or magnet.

 

1622 -  Right as a gun

 

17th Century - Right as my leg

 

1837 - Right as a trivet and about the same time, or a little later, people were saying that things were as right as ninepence, as right as a book, as right as nails, or as right as the bank.

 

Right as Rain first appears in 1894, though there is no mention of origin, though likely was first spoken by an Englishman. The first documented use of the saying is in Max Beerbohm’s book Yet Again of 1909.

 

Right as Rain makes no more sense than the variants it has usurped and is clearly just a play on words though perhaps there’s a lurking idea that rain often comes straight down, in a right line, to use the old sense.

 

Sources: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rig1.htm http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/3/messages/599.html