A Wodehouse phrase

One of the characters says that when he was caught short of Bethlehem Steel he said to his butler that he had had a very serious loss in the market and didn’t know where to turn for the stuff.
I can’t understand the meaning of “caught short of Bethlehem Steel”. I know that “caught short” means lack of money or something else. But what is “caught short of Bethlehem Steel”? Is it possible that the person mean that the shares of Bethlehem Steel Corporation went down?

"Caught short" - can have several meanings here in the UK.

As you say it can mean being short of ready cash at a crucial time. I know very little about PG Wodehouse except that he was popular in the 1920s and 1930s, especially with his Jeeves and Wooster characters, and I've never heard of Bethlehem Steel - it sounds as if it was a company quoted on the Stock Exchange and its share price had suddebly taken a nosedive and hence the "caught short" situation...the emphasis being the element of surprise and unexpectedness involved.

In much the same way you can be "caught short" by a sudden and violent summer thunderstorm and have to swiftly take refuge somewhere safe and secure, just as Augustus Toplady, the curate of the small Somerset (England) village of Blagdon, had to do when he was "caught short" by a severe and very sudden thunderstorm in 1753 while he was in a rocky vale in Burrington Combe, part of the famous Cheddar Gorge.

The Rev.Toplady took refuge from the lightning and torrent of rain and hail in a rocky crevice, and while he was waiting for the storm to abate he formulated the words of a very well known hymn in his mind...."Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee".

To be "caught short" can also mean suffering the sudden need to urinate, especially at a most inconvenient time. At least here in the UK it can mean this.

Damian (or should I say "Damian London EC2"?)

Thank you very much for the clear and detailed explanation.

I'm not familiar with the story, so I don't know if this applies, but here is another way the word "short" could relate to this.

Bethlehem Steel was an American steel corporation, and the quote mentions a loss in the market, so we're dealing with an unprofitable stock investment.

In the world of stock investing there is a phrase "to sell short", which means that you borrow shares from your stockbroker, sell them at the current market price and then replace them at a later time by buying an equivalent number of shares at the then-current market price. This enables you to profit from a decline in the stock's price.

In between the time you sell the shares and the later time you buy them back, you are said to "have a short position" or "to be short".

If the stock's price starts rising while many people have short positions, they may be forced to buy shares to close out their position. (They would lose more and more money the higher the price rises.) That buying itself pushes the stock's price farther up, leading to even more shorts closing their positions. Such an event is called a "short squeeze".

So it is possible, if the character was using technical jargon, that he was in this situation; he had bet that the stock's price would drop, but it didn't. If he was speaking more casually, then Damian London would be correct that the stock's price dropped suddenly, causing the character's losses.

Debra - just my handle Damian will do....the rest is my location for each of my posts....in this case London EC2 where I happened to be at the time - or the London Guildhall University in Moorgate to be precise.

You can call me what you like actually, but don't call me too early in the morning.

2 Rapp

Rapp, I really don’t know if your explanation is right, because the situation with the shares is not described in details, just the cited phrase. I can only understand that something unexpected had happened to the company’s shares and the character is out of money. Either you or Damian might be right. Anyway thank you for the information about stock market and its professional jargon.


2 Damian

OK, Damian, I see. :-)
In Russia we say “Зови хоть горшком, только в печь не сажай» which means “You can call me what you like”, and if word for word – “You can call me a pot, only don’t put me into oven”