The story
The popular picture is a dinner speaker glancing down at a few notes jotted on a starched white shirt cuff. It’s a charming image, and it may even explain the words. But it isn’t where the phrase first turns up.
The earliest known example in today’s sense comes from Hollywood. On October 7, 1928, The Film Daily described a director who “shoots ’em off the cuff,” making up scenes as he went instead of following a script.
That was a real habit in the silent-film days. In 1930, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recalled that early directors made pictures entirely “off the cuff,” or worked from only a brief synopsis.
Why the cuff? No one knows for sure. That same year, 1928, The Film Daily mentioned a film man writing ideas on his cuff at a golf tournament, so shirt-cuff notes were a real habit. Even so, the speech-making sense came later than the Hollywood one.
