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Dame Helen Mirren in a recent interview on aging said:

“It’s much better to age disgracefully! Take it on the chin, and roll with it. You die young, or you get older. There is nothing in between! You may as well enjoy it.” (www.oprahdaily.com)

She interestingly uses two idiomatic expressions but the second “roll with it” is the one I am more interested in.

Roll with it, as used in the extract, means; “To adapt to a situation despite unexpected circumstances or challenges.” and its usage appears to have taken off at the beginning of the 90s according to NGRAM.

Curiously the expression is not mentioned in the main dictionaries, plus I was not able to find a reliable source for its origin.

  1. Is the expression becoming common usage in BrE and or AmE as suggested by Google Ngram?

  2. Where does "roll with it" come from?

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    I don't know for sure, but perhaps it's from "roll with the punch" when on the receiving end in the sport of boxing? Commented Oct 15 at 15:15
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    Certainly "take it on the chin" invokes the fist-fight context. Commented Oct 15 at 15:17
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    Wiktionary has a list of quotations, but the first is only from 1995. Commented Oct 15 at 18:24
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    "Roll With It" by Oasis, released in 1995, is the likely cause of its surge in popularity. Commented Oct 16 at 10:03
  • Roll Tide!! . . . JK, IDK. Crimson Tide/#44 Commented Oct 17 at 1:33

2 Answers 2

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Roll with it appears to be a shortened or generalized variant of the older idiom roll with the punches. The definition and earliest citation, dated 1910, are given in the OED as follows:

to roll with the punches and variants: (of a boxer) to move the body, esp. the head, away from the opponent's blows so as to lessen the impact. Now usually figurative: to adapt oneself to adverse circumstances.

1910 Johnson would allow his head to roll with each punch, one of his ways of lessening the force of the blows.
Washington Post 28 June 9/4

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    As Toby Speight suggested. Commented Oct 15 at 18:20
  • Interesting, Any idea about its usage in AmE and BrE? Commented Oct 16 at 9:28
  • @Gio It's hard to quantify its relative frequency across AmE and BrE, but Google Ngram already gives a good general picture. For more details, you could check corpora such as COCA (for American English) and BNC or GloWbE (for British English). Other users can also weigh in with their impressions or experience of how the phrase is used today. Commented Oct 16 at 9:45
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    @Edwin, I'm pleased to have my speculative comment turned into a proper answer with citation. Thanks, emanen! Commented Oct 16 at 9:55
  • And the phrase was showing its malleability by 1978 when REO Speedwagon released "Roll With the Changes". Commented Oct 17 at 15:29
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not mentioned in the main dictionaries

https://www.etymonline.com/word/roll

roll(v.)

... To roll with the punches is a metaphor from boxing (1940).

So it looks like OED beat their citation by three decades.

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    This is a comment, not an answer. Anyway the question is about the expression “roll with it” not “roll with the punches”. Commented Oct 17 at 4:49
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    @Gio, You are free to interpret the pronoun as you wish. That's what makes the OED, and similar texts, poetry. // In some contexts it might be viewed as "a shortened or generalized variant of the older idiom roll with the punches". Commented Oct 17 at 5:06
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    @gio A comment is meant to clarify or improve the question, while this is intended to answer the question. The "a shortened or generalized variant of the older idiom roll with the punches" comment should be part of the answer though. Commented Oct 17 at 11:31
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    I think we all knew "roll with the punches" was from boxing. Not a valuable answer. Commented Oct 17 at 13:27

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