There are so many adages and common turns of phrase in the English language that add confusion to our daily lives. Here are my enlightening opinions about some of them:
A stitch in time saves nine. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a relatively young child who has never heard this phrase before but has just read A Wrinkle In Time. You may guess why I was so confused. Wrinkle and stitch are fairly similar if you are thinking of distortions in time, so my mind immediately led me to a disruption in the space-time continuum or a tesseract. A tesseract saves nine? Was this some arbitrary number of endangered lives that tessering could ultimately save from death or dismemberment? Or could one tesseract save nine other tesseracts? And how was this possible? While the rhyming nature of this adage makes it cute and easily remembered, it adds confusion to the interpretation, especially for young children, who can often most benefit from regurgitated wisdom. I give it an A-.
For all intents and purposes. This one never confused me but I discovered many years ago that multitudes of people are mistaken about the actual phrase. If you have never read this phrase anywhere, you may think that people are saying, "for all intensive purposes". Now, there is nothing inherently contradictory or absurd about this translation, but it is, nevertheless, incorrect. It is, however, hard to prove this to people. It's really not the phrase's fault. It gets no penalty. A.
Hollaback girl. Still waiting for an epiphany on that one. Incomplete, but leaning towards F.
Coup de grace. First of all, there is no way to reason this one out if you don't speak French. So we all feel like idiots when we have to nod along when someone says it in conversation, desperately waiting until we can get home to our dictionary or subtlely look it up on our smartphones (it means stroke of mercy, by the way. The final deathblow, usually a mercy kill). Next, no one says it correctly, apparently. We pronounce it 'coo de grah', when the French say it more like 'kude gras'. This puts us in a predicament, though, doesn't it? If we try to be intelligent and say it correctly, as native French speakers do, we are perceived as snobby and pretentious. If we say it like everyone else does, we are spineless worms who give in to peer pressure and says things incorrectly for no reason. Plus, the French will hate us even more. B-/C+.
Literally. This is more what you might call a "word" than a phrase, but it has been the subject of much anger and comedic writing lately, so I'm going to give it a stab. We all know the meaning of the word "literally": to take something at face value, with no metaphorical interpretations. With this nifty meaning, "literally" was prime material for comedians and amateur hyperbolists to add a subtle element of the absurd by prefacing extreme exaggeration, or hyperbole, with a word that would normally negate the hyperbole, but instead pronounces it. For example, "I could literally eat a horse right now." What I probably mean is simple that I am very hungry, but the addition of "literally" adds a special emphasis by jokingly taking away the possibility of hyperbole. I love it, but some people take the use of "literally" much too literally. So boo on them. I find it a nifty, if overused, comedic device. A-.
More to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment