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Today, I found myself discussing what students should have "under their belts" during a lecture, and I wondered to myself if there was some inappropriate undertone here that I might be unaware of.

Question: What is the origin of the phrase "under your belt"?

A google search revealed some webpages (e.g. [1]) that assert its origin is related to consumption of food -- once a meal has been eaten, it's under your belt (which is a relief). However, with such websites, I have no way to determine fact from "random guy on the internet making stuff up".

The Online Etymological Dictionary says:

To get something under (one's) belt is to get it into one's stomach.

The Oxford English Dictionary says:

Colloq. phr. under one's belt, in one's stomach. Also fig.

Their first three citations are:

• 1839 The Spirit of the Times: Away we went, each bearing, under his belt, his full share of the antifogmatical?compound.


• 1938 A Dictionary of American English on historical principles: Belt, v.? To put under one's belt; to swallow.


• 1954 The Manchester Guardian Weekly: His wife had 135,000 miles driving in the States under her belt?but was still failed.

Here's three earlier literal examples, all about a lot of alcohol under one's belt.

• 
  1762's The Young Hypocrite by Samuel Foote:

• 
  1790's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett (first published 1771):

• 
  1817's Ormond, a tale by Maria Edgeworth:

The literal meaning of having something under your belt is having it in your stomach, but it’s probably more frequently used figuratively, to mean having acquired something, often intellectual. For example, the OED has these two supporting citations, from the English novelists P G Wodehouse (1954) and John Wain (1962):

Just as you have got Hamlet and Macbeth under your belt

He wanted me to get plenty of Latin and Greek under the belt so that I
could be like him.

Below the belt has a quite different meaning. It’s from the language of boxing, where the rules forbid hitting the lower abdomen. It, too, can be used figuratively to describe other kinds of unfair act.

The phrase seems to be of Scottish origin. As Hugo found, most of the earliest uses of the phrase have to do with alcohol consumption. I did find this earlier figurative use of the phrase however from The History Of The Church And State Of Scotland, 1753 (date check):

It appears the figurative sense of under one's belt to mean owned or "contained by" goes back even further as evidenced by this old Scottish saying from A Complete Collection of Scotish Proverbs, 1721:

Under your belt means --

"to have learned or succeeded in something which might be an advantage in the future."

e.g. Basic computer skills are a good thing to have under your belt.