Inverness style rain cape

[Panache]

Not "a foot", afoot. The word afoot can mean underway. Holmes' quote "the game is afoot" just meant the game had started. Holmes considered the tracking down of the perpetrator to be a most serious game.

Chef,

The I believe the phrase comes from Shakespeare's Henry V

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Doing a little online research it would seem that the original phrase dealt with pursuing a game animal in a hunting context. After Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adopted the phrase it would seem to have come to mean that a game had started with game indicating an intellectual pastime/deversion.

Sorry for taking your thread so far off topic James.

Cheers

Jamie

[James MacMillan]

Sorry for taking your thread so far off topic

Oh, who cares?

So - - Is someone saying that "The game's afoot." doesn't come from Holmes?

It just seems so right!

Sort-of like "Judy, Judy, Judy" for Carey Grant - which supposedly he never said?