In the horse and buggy days the dirt roads would get worn with ruts from the wagon wheels.
Once you got your wagon wheels into these ruts it was very hard to get them out, you had to follow the same old path.
Thomas Carlyle (1839): Essay on Chartism – “Parliaments, lumbering along in their deep ruts of commonplace.”
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T. Hall (1660): Funebria Flore. – “If you throw enough dirt against the wall, some of it is bound to stick.”
This is a misquote of another term:
John Ozell (1714) [translated] Moliere: “If the cap fits, put it on.”
Harington (1618) Epigrams: ‘That he might scant trust him so farre as throw him.’
The term ‘histrionic’ developed from ‘histrion-, histrio,’ Latin for ‘actor.’ Something that is ‘histrionic’ tends to remind one of the high drama of stage and screen and is often ‘over the top’ and stagy. It especially calls to mind the theatrical form known as the ‘melodrama,’ where plot and physical action, not characterization, are emphasized. But something that is ‘histrionic’ isn’t always overdone; it might simply refer to an actor. In that sense, it becomes a synonym of ‘thespian.’
(Of course, it is also a personality disorder.)