If you 'wipe the floor with' someone, you defeat them easily. Searching on Google, I can only see explanations of what this idiom means, but not how it came about. What caused people to start using this phrase in this way?
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2I can guess, but I have no proof: I bet it's to do with bar brawls, in so far as a bar's floor always needs cleaning, and once you've incapacitated someone, you can then clean the floor with them.– Matt E. ЭлленCommented Jul 19, 2011 at 11:07
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I could buy the literal explanation above, but could it not just be likening the defeated person to a dirty rag; worthy only of wiping muck off the floor? I'm sure with a bit of thought, all kinds of "smack talk" can be thought of along those lines. "He made him his bitch" for instance, suggesting the defeated is now a servant or similar in that connotation.– BrendonCommented Jul 19, 2011 at 11:37
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I always thought it meant to wipe the floor "with" someone, as in together. I thought it meant friendship in hard times! But actually it means sth quite different.– Shiladitya MukherjeeCommented Jul 21, 2019 at 13:25
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1 Answer
According to A dictionary of slang, jargon and cant by Barrère and Leland (1897), it means that "one man has thrashed another so completely as to have taken him like a broom or mop, and swept or cleaned the floor with him."
(Rather cheekily, both usage examples there are from poems by Leland himself.)
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The askee said as much. This does not contribute anything new to the question. It is not an answer.– vectoryCommented Jul 21, 2019 at 19:34