Not Out of the Woods Yet

How is Your Leg?

It has been one year since I injured my leg, and I am not out of the woods yet. Over the past week, I have been feeling some tightness where my muscle attaches to my leg. For those that weren’t around for that drama last year, my calf muscle detached. My leg muscles are big from all the cycling, walking, and hiking that I do. However, that muscle had to completely rebuild and it’s still much smaller and weaker compared to my left leg. I think that I have just been doing too much exercise lately and that is why I am having some issues. So, I have been “resting” a bit this week and hoping it gets better.

Meaning

Not out of the woods means that you are not clear of danger. ‘The woods’ is another word for a proverbial forest. The forest (woods) is a dangerous place. It makes me think of Red Riding Hood. She was safe at home, but she encounters the wolf in the woods. In 2014, Walt Disney Pictures released a musical called Into the Woods. It was about the dangers faced by fairy tale characters that go into the forest. Indeed, if you search for movies with ‘woods’ in the title, you will find horror films. Clearly, the woods are a dangerous place. If you haven’t escaped the woods yet, you are still in danger. I would like to note that the danger isn’t always physical. Since this phrase is metaphorical, it can be used to talk about many situations: economic, physical danger, health concerns, or any difficult situation.

Example: He is recovering from his heart surgery, but he is not out of the woods yet.

Origin

The idea of not being safe until you are out of the woods can be traced back to Roman times. However, it doesn’t appear in English until the late 1700s. Dicitionary.com claims that it was first recorded in 1792 but they don’t give the source. It seems that it first appears in English in a letter that Abigail Adams wrote in November 1800 (found in The Letters of Benjamin Franklin & Jane Mecom). I should also mention that I came across a longer phrase, don’t halloo (or shout) until you are out of the woods, in a few places in my research. I am not sure if the longer phrase came first, after, or in parallel to out of the woods. Whatever the case may be, out of the woods is by far the more popular phrase.

The literal meaning of the phrase is to exit a forest. In that sense, the today’s phrase has been around for hundreds of years. In the Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth (1602-1625) out of the woods appears at least twice: “We went ranging up and down till the sun began to draw low, and then we hasted out of the woods, that we might come to our shallop; which, when we were out of the woods, we espied a great way off, and called them to come to us; the which they did as soon as they could, for it was not yet high water.”

Running in the Forest

One of the scary things about being in the woods is that you can’t see the creatures. There are a lot of dark places for them to hide. I remember going for a walk with my sister in a small, wooded area near my house. It was in a city, so there shouldn’t have been any dangerous animals. We underestimated how long we would be walking, and I think we got a little lost too. The sun went down, and we had to use the lights on our phones to navigate. Well, we turned a corner and there was this cat sized hairy thing with big teeth staring at us. I think our imaginations got the better of us and we hurried away. Looking back, I realized that it was probably a harmless opossum. We felt quite relieved when we were finally out of the woods.

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Resources:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/out--of--the--woods
https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/messages/924.html
https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/phrases/out-of-the-woods/
https://ia800208.us.archive.org/13/items/chroniclesofpilg00young/chroniclesofpilg00young.pdf
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/never+halloo+till+you+are+out+of+the+woods

Not Out of the Woods Yet