APAD: toe-curling

Meaning:

   Something that is `toe-curlingly embarrassing' is discomforting enough as to

   make one squirm and curl one's toes in response.

 

Background:

 

   The date of origin of this American phrase is rather uncertain ...

 

   `Toe-curling' was a common phrase in the USA in the 1950s but it was used to

   convey a sense of pleasure rather than embarrassment. There are many

   advertisements from around that time that refer to deep-pile carpets or

   blankets that offered "toecurling warmth" etc. Another, more figurative,

   example comes from the letters page of the California newspaper The Oakland

   Tribune, July 1950:

 

     I was perfectly content with, "Gee, I love you, Freckle-Face," until that

     awful person had to go and inform me that only old fogies with one foot in

     the grave and the other on a banana peel didn't give out with poetic,

     dynamic and toe-curling phrases like "Your eyes are like limpid pools -

     Your lips are like etc." My husband NEVER said things like that to me.

 

   `Toe-curling' in the sense of embarrassing isn't found until the 1960s and so

   is probably derived independently of Ade's version. The Jamaican newspaper

   The Gleaner, printed this in November 1962:

 

     "I recall disgracing myself into flushing, toe-curling nervousness by

     dropping, and cracking... my huge, much-decorated heavy chamber pot!"

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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In the hotspring pool at a Banff hotel, my poorly executed sumersault made a big

splash which drew angry stares from children and shunning glances from adults

nearby. My wife turned away as if she didn't know me. I was about 30 and it was

one of the toe-curling moments on my journey to the West. In Chinese, we say "wish

to disappear into a crack in the earth."