The story
Laurel is the sweet bay tree, the same glossy leaf many cooks drop into a pot of soup. To the ancient Greeks it was sacred to the god Apollo, and it stood for victory.
At the Pythian Games, held at Delphi in Apollo’s honor from the 6th century BC, winners were crowned with wreaths of laurel leaves. Over time, “laurels” came to mean any honors a person had earned.
When the idea of resting on them reached English, it was a compliment. A 1723 translation of the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz said a duke “was old enough to take his Repose under the Shadow of his Laurels.” After a long, distinguished career, a person had earned the right to sit back.
In the 1800s the tone changed. An 1825 review of the novelist Maria Edgeworth said, “We do not affect to wish she should repose on her laurels and rest satisfied.” Resting on laurels started to sound like coasting, and that is the sense that stuck.
