If I told you that our poor old friend had kicked the bucket or bought the farm, you’d know right away that our friend was now on the wrong side of the grass. But would someone whose first language isn’t English understand what I mean?
Probably not. That’s because when I was conveying the bad news I was using idioms, or sayings that have metaphorical meanings and are accepted in common usage, but often make little literal sense. One technical writing manual even warns against using idioms in any writing that might be translated into another language since its meaning is not obvious from the words it uses.
A good example of this is when a native German man, whose English was as good as mine, was baffled when he overheard a group of us students talking about the Good Humor man and asked us to explain just who this “good-humored man” was.
While some idioms, when heard in the context of a sentence, can be pretty self-explanatory, others are real head-scratchers that require a little digging to unearth their origins. Take “kick the bucket” and “buy the farm” mentioned above, whose morbid metaphors for death are said to have come from real-life events.
In the first case, a person who wanted to do himself in would stand on a bucket, put the noose around his neck and then kick the bucket out from under himself.
One of the several explanations of “buy the farm” involves the tale of a military pilot who died when his plane crashed on a farm. (As the story goes, the farmer then sued the government for damages and got enough money to pay off his mortgage.)
Another example: If you think your job is no bed of roses, you can thank Christopher Marlow for being able to describe the way you feel. In his poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” the lady heard her herder declare, “And I will make thee beds of roses/And a thousand fragrant posies.”
The English language has many many more. Consider my own personal circumstances, if you will; things are no bed of roses for me right now either I must admit.
I recently learned the hard way to not turn a blind eye to someone with whom I don’t see eye to eye. In fact, I tried to turn the other cheek and hold my tongue, and even gave him the cold shoulder, but he still stabbed me in the back.
A penny for my thoughts? If you want my two cents worth, guys like him are a dime a dozen, not worth a plugged nickel. It’s time for him to pay the piper.
I’m just talking off the cuff, but as a rule of thumb, I should beat him hands down. Just to be sure, I bit the bullet and armed myself to the teeth. That wolf in sheep’s clothing isn’t going to get my goat.
I caught up with him outside of the local watering hole. “Hold your horses,” he told me, “you’re barking up the wrong tree. Let’s go settle this over a couple cold ones.”
So we went inside and I told him I wanted to hear his side of the story, straight from the horse’s mouth. “Come on, spill the beans! Cat got your tongue?”
From his story, I knew that something was rotten in Denmark. “I’ll believe you when pigs fly,” I told him. “Let’s go outside and settle this like real men — with a footrace. First one to the corner wins, OK?
“Too far,” he said. “How about the next lamppost?”
“You’re on,” I said, putting all my eggs in one basket.
I was three sheets to the wind with my head in the clouds, so I threw caution to the wind, but it was a wild goose chase. He may have beaten me, but I’m not letting him off the hook until the cows come home.
This morning I’m really feeling under the weather, so I guess I’ll just have to weather the storm.
As for more columns about idioms, that’s up in the air.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”
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