eat one's Wheaties

English

WOTD – 22 August 2012

Etymology

An allusion to the breakfast cereal Wheaties, long advertised as the "Breakfast of Champions", and its long-standing association with sports celebrities.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Verb

eat one's Wheaties (third-person singular simple present eats one's Wheaties, present participle eating one's Wheaties, simple past ate one's Wheaties, past participle eaten one's Wheaties)

1. (US and Canada, idiomatic) To prepare or fortify oneself for an activity requiring exertion.
   • 1971 October 19, Haney Reilly, “Another game, another loss but Hawkeyes looked better”, in Telegraph-Herald, Iowa, USA, retrieved 1 July 2011, page 17:

     But he just couldn't get the ball through the goal posts (poor Harry . . . he didn't eat his Wheaties, or else his shoe was on backwards).

   • 1994 September 11, “Garbage Collector Lifts Away Worries”, in Miami Herald, page 1B:

     Jo-Ann Wonsik answered a Herald want ad for a career requiring day after day of heavy lifting. . . . "And you've got to eat your Wheaties on this job," she said.

   • 2008 December 10, Felicity Barringer, “Science Students Get a Real-Life Lesson, in Science Fiction”, in New York Times, retrieved 1 July 2011:

     Of all the movie promotions in all the towns in all the world, Keanu Reeves had to walk into this one: a California Institute of Technology forum at which he was asked, “How could an alien being grow so fast without violating standard mass- and energy-conservation laws?” . . . He paused. “I ate my Wheaties.”

Translations

fortify oneself

• Swedish: äta upp gröten, (skaffa sig) råg i ryggen

See also

• gird up one's loins
• have one's Weetabix - British English version
• destroy the evidence - colloquial/slang