The phrase "Tom, Dick and Harry" is a placeholder for multiple unspecified people; "Tom, Dick or Harry" plays the same role for one unspecified person. [1] [2] The phrase most commonly occurs as "every Tom, Dick and Harry", meaning everyone , and "any Tom, Dick or Harry", meaning anyone . The masculine names in these phrase do not in themselves imply exclusion of females, but use of either version when the context implies necessarily being female - for example, "Your mother could be any Tom Dick or Harry" - would normally be seen as careless or ironic.

TOM, DICK AND HARRY TICKETS Cirque du Soleil Tickets Radio City Rockettes Tickets The Nutcracker Tickets Disney On Ice Tickets Wicked Tickets The Lion King Tickets

Similar phrases in other languages

• Pierre, Paul ou Jacques — in French
• Sulio i Pulio (????? ? ?????) — in Bulgarian
• Hinz und Kunz — in German
• Kreti und Pleti - in German
• Jan en Alleman — in Dutch
• Fulano, Zutano y Mengano — in Spanish
• Tizio, Caio e Sempronio — in Italian
• Gud og hvermann — in Norwegian
• Fulano, Beltrano e Sicrano — in Portuguese
• Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov (??????, ??????, ???????) — in Russian
• Are, Oore, Shamsi Kooreh — in Persian
• Andersson, Pettersson och Lundström — in Swedish
• Fulan wa 'Ellan ( ?? ?? ??? ? ??? , ???? ? ????) - in Arabic
• Era Ghera, Nathu, Khera (???????? ???? ????) — in Urdu/Hindi
• ''Phalana Dhingra — in Punjabi
• ''Nodaai Bhodaai - in Assamese
• ???? (pinyin: a mao a gou) — in Chinese (lit. "cat and dog")
• ???? (pinyin: zhang san li sì) — in Chinese (? and ? are common surnames, while ? and ? are the numbers three and four)

In medicine

English-speaking medical students use the phrase in memorizing the order of an artery, and a nerve, and the three tendons of the flexor retinaculum in the lower leg: the T,D,a,n, and H of T om, D ick an d H arry correspond to t ibialis posterior, flexor d igitorum longus, posterior tibial a rtery, tibial n erve, and flexor h allucis longus. ^[3]

In popular culture

• Tom, Dick, and Harry are the names of three mountain peaks in the Cascade Range in Oregon, U.S.A.
• Tom, Dick, and Harry were the names given to three Galapagos Island tortoises brought back to England aboard the HMS Beagle by Charles Darwin, as documented in his book, The Voyage of the Beagle .
• Tom, Dick, and Harry are evoked by names of the characters in the play "The Verge" by Susan Glaspell.
• Tom, Dick and Harry (1941 film)
• In the musical Kiss Me, Kate there is a song "Tom, Dick or Harry".
• In The Great Escape , Allied POWs referred to three escape tunnels as Tom, Dick, and Harry to avoid arousing the suspicions of their German captors.
• Tom, Dick and Sally — British comic strip.
• 3rd Rock from the Sun — the three alien characters posing as male humans took "Tom", "Dick" and "Harry" as given names (and the one posing as female took "Sally", coinciding with the comic strip).
• In the G.I. Joe universe, the real names of the original three Dreadnoks (Torch, Buzzer and Ripper) are Tom Wynken, Dick Blynken and Harry Nod.
• Tom, Dick, and Harry — 2006 Bollywood film.
• A television advertisement for Fernwood Fitness, a woman's only fitness club in Australia, had the by-line "No Toms, no Harrys and definitely no Dicks" ^[4]
• In the Futurama episode A Head in the Polls, when explaining why they could not allow Bender to move in at the Head Museum's Presidential head exhibition, the head of George H. W. Bush expresses that they cannot allow "every Tom, Dick and Harry to move in" before immediately apologizing to the heads of Jefferson, Nixon and Truman.

Notes and references

1. [http://books.google.com/books?id=3BpOKfMbBowC&pg=PA178&dq=%22Tom,+Dick+and+Harry%22&lr= Henry IV, Part 1]
2. [http://books.google.com/books?id=mAdUqLrKw4YC&pg=PA1981&dq=%22Tom,+Dick+and+Harry%22&lr= The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English]
3. MedicalMnemonics
4. Women's gym pumps up profits

de:Hinz und Kunz