Off my soap box…

I have a tendency to list out more reasons than necessary when expressing my opinion. Then I get off of my soap box and get back on my way. Today when I got off my soap box about the poor foresight of a client’s pricing strategy I decided to look up the origin of the term. Here’s a great explanation from The Word Detective:

Literally speaking, a “soap box” is exactly what it sounds like, a box in which soap, usually loose laundry soap, is shipped. Though today’s soapboxes are, like much of today’s fast food, constructed of cardboard, up until the middle of the 20th century they were almost universally made of sturdy wood. This sturdiness gave soap boxes a variety of post-shipping uses as storage containers and impromptu seating, and even as the basis of children’s homemade racing cars, as employed in the venerable “Soap-Box Derby.”

One of the most notable uses of an empty soap box back in the 19th century was as a makeshift speaking platform. Since speakers finding themselves forced to resort to a soapbox were also likely to be incensed by not having a proper speaker’s platform (and all the social inequalities implied therein), “soap box” came to be a handy metaphor for a highly charged rhetorical style. By 1907, “soap box oratory” had became a derogatory term for protracted, impassioned, and possibly hyperbolic speechmaking. Still, many people would argue that more truth has been spoken from soap boxes than we’ll ever hear on TV.