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#121181 01/25/04 01:41 PM
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Yesterday I said I would pick up the room after finishing the newspaper. And then I thought how funny that expression might sound to someone unaccustomed to speaking English. 'Picking up a room' would be immediately unstandable to English-speaking people, even if they happened to use other expressions such as 'ready the room.' [As a child visiting a young friend's Swedish English-speaking family, I thought 'ready the room' sounded quaint.] People accustomed to speaking English could easily make the transfer from the ludicrousness of actually picking up a room to other uses of 'to pick,' such as 'to picking something up' without blinking an eye and could, therefore, easily understand that you hadn't meant to literally pick up a room.

And all this speculation over yesterday's morning paper made me wonder about other expressions for setting a room in order--and whether you might have some local expressions that would present difficulty in interpreting for those who don't speak English fluently.

Belmarduk: I went ahead and started a new thread on this topc although your own on Miscellany about the your dictionary/not mine is closely related. I just didn't want to hijack your thread with a focus on picking up rooms, which interests me since it is a task I have mastered procrastinating.





#121182 01/25/04 02:07 PM
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Dear WW: I think "picking up a room" is an ellipsis for
"picking up (the trash in) a room".

In looking for a discussion of "ellipsis" I found a site
with helpful hints to writers, short, and easy to read:
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~schong2/rhet1b_2001/quoting.html


#121183 01/25/04 04:04 PM
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Funny I'd not thought about the phrase in the way you point out. But you sure made me think. Can you imagine the range of emotion fleeting across the face of the student of English as s/he worked it out ?!?

Now, to get to your question : sometimes I call it "Blitzing the room" - a fast cleaning - the kind made between the time you get a call company is on the way and the time the comapny arrives!




#121184 01/25/04 04:58 PM
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It's an Americanism with a capital "Jeez you ain't kiddin'"! The expression is never, to my knowledge, used anywhere else than in the US of, um, A. It sounds odd to me, even though I have heard it dunnamany times now. I always have this vision of someone bodily hefting the room into the air and then doing ... something ... with it!

We would say (and by we, I mean the bulk of the English-speaking world) "tidy up a room".

Sorry WordyWon!


#121185 01/25/04 05:04 PM
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Dear Capfka: and JohhHawaii might ask you why you needed
the "up".


#121186 01/25/04 05:11 PM
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It's just part of the expression, Bill. There's no logical, semantic or syntactical reason for the "up", it just is! "Tidying a room" would be as understandable as "tidying up a room". It's just not "correct".


#121187 01/25/04 05:14 PM
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Oh, Cap', I certainly didn't mean to imply that the majority of the English-speaking world uses the phrase to pick up a room to mean to tidy up a room. I simply meant that the majority of the English-speaking world could figure the term out easily in context, yet those who were not fluent in English would have difficulty with it.

To my American ear, tidy up, which I've read, of course, sounds feminine. I would never imagine a man speaking of 'tidying up' a room--just as, I suppose, you cannot imagine a woman such as I picking up a room. ...or anyone else, for that matter, I suppose!


#121188 01/25/04 05:24 PM
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Not immediately understandable to me, even though I like to think that I am an English-speaking person. Similar to Capfka, my first reaction was "what the #$%^#%?!", then, a re-read to figure out what the phrase meant. My first reaction was that it was some of sort of pretentious interior designer (tautology?) lingo for "brighten a room's colour scheme", or the like.


#121189 01/25/04 05:26 PM
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I learned "tidy" from Kipling's The Elephant's Child. On his way back home, he picked up the banana peels he had
dropped because he was "a tidy Pachyderm". It was a long time before I found out what "pachy-" meant.

tidy

SYLLABICATION: ti·dy
PRONUNCIATION: td
ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: ti·di·er, ti·di·est
1. Orderly and neat in appearance or procedure. See synonyms at neat1. 2. Informal Adequate; satisfactory: a tidy arrangement. 3. Informal Substantial; considerable: a tidy sum.
VERB: Inflected forms: ti·died, ti·dy·ing, ti·dies

TRANSITIVE VERB: To put in order: tidied up the house.
INTRANSITIVE VERB: To make things tidy: tidied up after dinner.
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. ti·dies
A decorative protective covering for the arms or headrest of a chair.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English tidi, in season, healthy, from tide, time. See tide1.
OTHER FORMS: tidi·ly —ADVERB
tidi·ness —NOUN

The etymology surprises me.


#121190 01/25/04 05:38 PM
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'Picking up' versus 'dressing down'? How about 'listen up, youse guys'? 'Speak up, I say'. The preverb up can be used to intensify the verb. 'Shut up'. But 'draw up' and 'bring up'. 'Lay up' versus 'put down'. Prepositions may start out spatially, but metaphor soon takes over. 'Vote down', 'dust down' versus 'dust up'. Bill's right, sometimes there's very little logic in the ways of language.


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