keep the ball rolling: keep an activity moving forward smoothly

This expression rose in popularity during William Henry Harrison's 1840 presidential campaign. Harrison's Whig party ran a lively campaign, holding barbeques and bonfire rallies and making sure voters were provided with plenty of hard cider. (When Harrison's opponents accused him of being a yokel who sat in his log cabin drinking hard cider, he turned the tables by labeling his run for office the "Hard Cider Campaign.") Among other campaign stunts, Harrison staffers rolled ten-foot high slogan-covered parade balls through the streets of towns across the country. They rallied the crowds that gathered with cries of "Keep the ball rolling for Harrison."

Although Harrison's people popularized keep the ball rolling, they didn't invent it. Versions of the phrase appear in print as early as the late eighteenth century. A possible source of the term is the ancient game of bandy, called "shinny" in America. Shinny players pushed a three-inch ball across an icy field or frozen pond using crooked sticks. The ball had to be kept rolling continuously throughout the game. Shinny was wildly popular in its day. College students played ferocious games, accompanied by much mayhem. In 1787 Princeton banned this rowdy game, and other schools followed suit. A mild version of shinny is still played in parts of northern Europe, but few modern-day Americans are familiar with it.

Read more about this expression in Let's Talk Turkey: The Stories Behind America's Favorite Expressions (Prometheus, June 2008).