Gird one’s loins

Origin of: Gird one’s loins

Gird one’s loins

Human loins are situated around the waist or hip area, where one would generally have worn a sword belt or girdle in days gone by. Thus, to gird one’s loins in olden times would have entailed buckling on a sword and getting ready for action. Since the early 1600s it was also used figuratively to get ready to face any situation, which of course is how the expression is used today. There are twenty-seven mentions of people either girding or setting a girdle around their loins in the Bible. Twenty-four of these are in the Old Testament and four in the New. This is just one of them from Kings I, 18:46, “And he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab.”