Colloquialisms [promises to be Unutterably Silly]

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by RWood

That's a tough road to hoe ....

At the risk of being anti-socially pedantic: that should be "row" (as in garden row) not "road" -- it's a common misperception, though.

Just like it's not "You've got another thing coming," but rather "You've got another think coming."

And if you think about it, it really ought to be "I couldn't care less what NatCh thinks about my colloquialisms," not "I could care less ...."

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by NatCh

At the risk of being anti-socially pedantic

Surely , never ...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by NatCh

At the risk of being anti-socially pedantic: that should be "row" (as in garden row) not "road" -- it's a common misperception, though.

Just like it's not "You've got another thing coming," but rather "You've got another think coming."

And if you think about it, it really ought to be "I couldn't care less what NatCh thinks about my colloquialisms," not "I could care less ...."

Maybe we need a separate "Screwed-up Colloquialisms" thread.

umn... did I say that aloud?...

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by NatCh

At the risk of being anti-socially pedantic: that should be "row" (as in garden row) not "road" -- it's a common misperception, though.

To quote again my Dictionary of Cliches: "Once the hoe was about the only tool available for weeding a row of plants in a garden that was too small for a horse-drawn rig, and working one's way down such a row (or more likely several of them) was a tedious business...David Crockett was using the expression in that way in his Tour of the North and Down East (1835): 'I never opposed Andrew Jackson for popularity. I knew it was a hard row to hoe.'"

Did you know that the phrase "bring down the curtain" is a misquotation of "ring down the curtain"? "At one time the signal to raise or lower a theatrical curtain was actually a bell rung backstage. Sheila Kaye-Smith had a figurative meaning in John Galsworthy (1916): 'Thus the curtain rings down on Irene Forsyte, crushed under the heel of prosperity.'"

I love this book. It's just too short and is missing so many cliches of which I would like to know the origins. I should mention that Amazon has two or three dictionaries of cliches by various authors for the Kindle. Sadly, Sony does not.

[Cthulhu]

Find it interesting that, besides mis-remembering or understanding a cliche, many people attempt to....'improve' upon an idiom in the interest of emphasising their point more. Oft-times, all these mis-guided souls achieve is a butchering of the phrase and message they intend to convey.

@ NatCh: You so totally should, like, not EVAR get eternal lying, dreaming squid started on the myriad difficulties visited upon the English language by the sordid, despicable creation of contractions.

Why do so many people wish to know where my 'cat' is? Do they believe that I travel everywhere with it, so that to know its location is to know my own?

Verily, do not get it.

[NatCh]

They're prob'ly just wantin' to make sure you haven't eaten the poor li'l thing.

[Cthulhu]

No, no no.

They ask about my cat, my hat, my bat, my rat, all manner of possesions, when what these fools mean to know Where am I.

Know that most of you are thinking with one brain cell one thought:

Don' be hatin'.
;-)

[slayda]

Originally Posted by NatCh

At the risk of being anti-socially pedantic: that should be "row" (as in garden row) not "road" -- it's a common misperception, though.

Rwood must just be a city boy.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Don't trust Russian translations. 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' was once famously rendered as 'The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.'

I heard this in my comp sci phd studies on computers and language. I heard that it was a computer translation, but that may or may not be so!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Find it interesting that, besides mis-remembering or understanding a cliche, many people attempt to....'improve' upon an idiom in the interest of emphasising their point more. Oft-times, all these mis-guided souls achieve is a butchering of the phrase and message they intend to convey.

I'm now trying to remember the name of the comedian who made his career by replacing letters in words or similar words in phrases, including colloquialisms, to change their meaning (often to reverse it) for his punchlines.

Example: "My mother-in-law is the silt of the Earth." (Da-dump-bump!)

[radleyp]

Steve, I think the comedian you have in mind is Norm Crosby (he would transpose letters and words, and it's he I first heard say, "It's like shouting theatre in a crowded fire.")

Badgood Deb, the garbled Russian translation was supposedly the work of an early machine translator, and when it comes to such idioms, modern machine translators are not so great either.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by radleyp

Steve, I think the comedian you have in mind is Norm Crosby (he would transpose letters and words, and it's he I first heard say, "It's like shouting theatre in a crowded fire.")

That's him! Thank you diffusely.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

That's him! Thank you diffusely.

Also sounds like something Rodney Dangerfield would say. Don't know whether he did though.

& before him the short one of the Bowery Boys - Sach maybe.

[Cthulhu]

Steven Wright is quite gifted at de-constructing the message/imagery behind common English idioms when viewed at face value, akin to the Tex Avery cartoon where the swinging hipster's narrative is shown to us through the mind of Noah Webster.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Yeh, siure, the Bowery Boyz... I remember dose mugs like me own fam'ly! One of 'em became famous yeahs latah as a wise-cracking' cartoon rabbit! To this day, I have to fight the urge to say "stragedy" in office meetings!

Curly of the Stooges got off one on occasion, too: "Hey! I resemble that remark!"