Phrases of life

After telling someone that I’d “dodged another bullet” – some test results came back negative – I started musing on the various interesting phrases we use in everyday speech without thinking too much about them.

I’ve been using “dodging bullets” as a metaphor for not having whatever ghastly disease I thought I was in for, given my symptoms on a given doctor’s visit. Despite having a degree of heart disease and rotten breathing, despite the fact I use a space-alien’s mask at night to help, you’ll be pleased to know that I don’t have a lot of other diseases which kept me up at night worrying.

Another of the commonplace phrases we use without thinking is I/we/he/she has/have “bitten off more than I/we/he/she can chew”. Does it come from an animal exemplar? Who knows?

Many other phrases are actually quite odd yet we use them regardless. For example, “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Why those animals? Couldn’t it be raining lizards and bees, or raining elephants and monkeys? Who knows?

How about: “I haven’t seen (he/she/it etc) for donkeys’ years?” Why donkeys? Where did the phrase come from?

Then there’s the idea that something could be “between Hell and high water”. I get Hell as the low point but why not Heaven as the upper limit.

Have you ever said that something or another had “the ring of truth”? Is that ring as in something on your finger or ring as in bell? And either way, what’s the connection with truth?

We often use the phrase that something or another “looked for all the world like …”. “Looked like” is obvious so why throw in “world”?

How about commenting that something has “given up the ghost”? I suppose it has a connection to something no longer alive but the more I say it the more opaque it seems.

And speaking of opacity, how is it that something is said to be “dead straight”? Really, how did these two words connect? When did “dead” become a synonym for completely, or absolutely or really?

Saying that you might have caught your “death of cold” is also a little weird. I guess it may have come from the Very Olden Days when catching cold might have seemed a precursor to pneumonia when death was not unlikely. But these days?

“Cool as a cucumber” is another beauty. Why not “cool as a lettuce” or “cool as a capsicum”?

Then there’s “as right as rain”? Unless this was coined by drought-stricken Australian farmers I’m not sure what is it about rain that makes it right.

How about “the crack of time” or “the nick of time”? I believe there’s modern cultural usage of the first phrase but I’m thinking about the way we often say these two as casual throwaways. What cracks, or what gets nicked?

I looked up the phrase “mad as a hatter” thinking it came from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  and Through the Looking Glass where the Mad Hatter was a significant character. But in fact this the phrase had an existence before the mid-19^th Century when these books were published. According to Wikipedia, mercury was used in the manufacturing of felt hats during the 19th century, causing a high rate of mercury poisoning among those working in the hat industry. Mercury poisoning causes neurological damage, including slurred speech, memory loss, and tremors, which led to the phrase “mad as a hatter”. Isn’t it nice to have an explanation?

Of course worrying about the meaning of phrases could have you “at your wit’s (or possibly “wits’) end” meaning you tried everything you could think of but failed. That actually makes some sense.

Which cannot be said for the phrase “time out of mind”! Any explanations appreciated …

I’ve also wondered about “a stitch in time saves nine”. Why not ten, or twenty-seven? I suspect it’s just because of the time/nine rhyme (no pun intended).

One phrase which definitely makes sense is “once in a blue moon”. There is such a phenomenon as a blue moon when there’s an additional moon at certain times in a year. I was going to tell you the precise definition but frankly, I couldn’t understand it!

And just before I close, a nod to Cockney rhyming slang. Your “china” is your mate … “mate/china plate/china”. And a hat is a titfer as in “hat/titfertat/titfer”. Stairs are “apples and pears” and wife is “trouble and strife”. There’s also “telling porkies” which comes from “pork pies/lies! I didn’t come from a cockney speaking family but I recall that we did us the term “titfer” for hat and I still use the term “porkies” for my grandchildrens’ untruths!

So let me know any more strange phrases which come to your mind. And a special callout to my friend Ester who is a highly accomplished Interpreter and Translator. Just imagine what she has to cope with if any of these phrases crop up in her work!

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Richard Nixon on welcoming the moon-landing astronauts back to Earth: “This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.”