Even more phrases of life

 

Well I thought I’d done my dash last week but the use of “done my dash” has decided me to add to my collection of phrases we all use and which pepper our speech (there’s another one!).

Done your dash probably refers to finishing a running race – the hundred metre dash perhaps. And as for something “peppering” our speech, it’s confusing. The phrase means that we sprinkle our speech with something or another but I don’t think it means “spicing” it up.

This week I found myself using a lot of these phrases including two which refer to one’s state of health. Once I said I was “sub-par” and on another occasion that I was “under the weather”. Neither of these make particular sense. Sub-par is used to refer to something which is less than it should be and yet in golf, having a round which is below par is a good thing. I can’t imagine where “under the weather” came from, whether it refers to good weather or bad weather and what being “under” it could possibly mean. Yet we all know what we mean when we say it.

“Wreaking havoc” is a good phrase. In this case its meaning is perfectly obvious but it’s the use of that marvellously Biblical word “wreaking” that gives it its punch. Another phrase with what I think might be Biblical origins is “the writing is on the wall”. I wondered if it came from the famous scene in the Book of Daniel of Belshazzar’s feast. Mysterious writing appears on the wall during the feast: Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. A terrified Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, sends for the sage Daniel who interpreted the words to read: “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” When we say “the writing is on the wall” we usually mean something bad is afoot so it could well have the Biblical origin.

Not Biblical but “in the ballpark” (American I guess, for a baseball field) are expressions like “Damn it to Hell” a particular favourite of mine, “good Heavens!” and “for Heaven’s sake”. I would bet that none of us think of Heaven and Hell when we use these phrases but I suppose they may have originated some time ago when people had a clear view of what they thought could be blamed for one and praised for another.

I don’t think this is Biblical but making a “rod for your own back” brings to mind those religious penitents who walk a trail lashing themselves with whips. Or perhaps some serf having to carry a load of rods on his back.

I’ve already talked of “the skin of your teeth” which means you only just managed to achieve something. There’s also the skin off your nose as in “it’s no skin off my nose” if you don’t do “x” or “y.

Something is said to be “not a patch on” something else meaning not nearly as good as. And yet if you patch a garment it means a lesser look so obviously has nothing to do with the phrase.

Why do we say “a hatful” of something? Like, “I’ve had a hatful of that behaviour!”. Are we referring to an upturned bowler hat full of something?

And what are ”odds and sods”? Is it just a marginally amusing rhyme or does it actually mean something? There’s also “bog standard” meaning the most standard, but why attach the idea to the word bog which in this country means toilet.

These days my grandson tells me that some version of the word cahoot means some application or another in the tech world of things I don’t pretend to understand. But in my generation someone could be said to be “in cahoots” with someone else, a phrase with a slightly sinister air suggesting those parties in cahoots with each other are up to no good.

Also from the slightly sinister world comes “all bets are off”. I have no idea what it comes from but it means that everything is over or finished.

Before I end I’ll just throw in “over the top”; we all know what it means but why that particular phrases. And, finally, “chief cook and bottle washer” – we joke that in our household my daughter is the cook and I’m the bottle washer but why bottles? Why not frying pans or baking dishes”? This is destined, I feel, for perpetual confusion.

 

Quote of the Week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

This clerihew from Australian-born poet Peter Porter:

“In Australia

Inter alia,

Mediocrities

Think they’re Socrates.”