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Joined: Jun 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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WW, my point was that most of the English-speaking world who don't have the benefit of a broad knowledge of Americanisms would not immediately be able to work out what "pick up" meant in this setting. They may be able to work it out from the context, but it's a colloquialism which is unique to the US and (I suspect) not all of the US.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
From a REDBOOK magazine article:
Meet Dr. Greer • Past Columns
"How can I get my husband to pick up after himself?"
My husband has this maddening habit of dropping his dirty clothes all over the house, and I'm constantly picking up after him. No matter how much I complain, he keeps doing it. Is there anything I can do to get him to stop doing this?
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Pick up your stuff! Clean your room! I’ve told my son that all his life.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
I once asked a friend from Argentina to 'put a light under the kettle.' I can't remember her follow through exactly but it started with bafflement and ended with inaction.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
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Dear IP: to combine a couple Biblical quotes,
" Neither do wise virgins light a candle, and put it under a bushel." (or kettle)
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
We do understand "picking up after yourself", but the more generalised "picking up a room" is, well, foreign!
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Capfka: After a mother has used a complete sentence ten
thousand times to a kid, the sentence gets abbreviated.
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Joined: Jul 2003
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230 |
>After a mother has used a complete sentence ten
thousand times to a kid, the sentence gets abbreviated.
Not here, not that one. As Capfka has made clear, the phrase "pick up a room" is NOT used here. "Pick up after yourself", yes, "tidy up the room", but not "pick up the room".
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Max: Capfka also said he believed the phrase was to be found only in small areas of US. WW uses it in VA, I learned it in MA, and I found fairly close quotes in two national magazines.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Good grief. I never in a million years meant that my expression picked up (if you will) from my own region was one that was used anywhere else other than in my own region.
My original request--way back up there--was simply to hear what other expressions others might use to mean the same thing. My friend from childhood from the Swedish family always referred to 'readying up the room,' which I mentioned sounded quaint to me as a child. My own family's expression of picking up a room, granted, would sound equally 'foreign' to those outside of my region. The only thing I was suggesting that was in context English-speaking people could figure out this somewhat bizarre expression and realize that I hadn't meant I was going to literally pick up the room, an obvious physical impossibility, but instead would consider other applications of the verb 'to pick up' thereby knowing what I meant when I said I was going to pick up the room.
Then I asked for expressions meaning to straighten a room (and that's one to think about: why? Was the room crooked?). I figured there would be some from your own regions that might prove to be equally confusing to non-English speaking people.
So, let me be clear: I never meant that my own expression of picking up a room was meant to be one familiar to all English-speaking people. I simply meant that it was one that English-speaking people would not find quite as hard to figure out as non-English-speaking people.
Wow chimed in well with blitzing a room. I feel like blitzing my communication efforts today that have certainly been less than effective.
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