I just had a discussion with the young woman who rents my spare upstairs bedroom, and she said she was "seeing someone." The implication is clearly that she is romantically - or at least lustfully - involved with him, yet on its face the expression seems odd. Just how much of him she sees is the issue, is it not? The expression used to be common in business, as in, "Mr. Jones will see you now, Sir," or Dr. Bill will see you today at four." There, the implications are qhite different. What parallel expressions are there in other parts of the world? How do you all see "being seen?"
And why was I taught as a child to say, upon leaving someone, to say, "It was good seeing you" or "Good to see you" rather than, "It was nice meeting you." I never did understand why "meeting" was less polite that "seeing"--and I still don't!
Best regards, Nice reading you, Geoff!
WordWondering
Wordwind: I was taught to say "It was nice to meet you" upon first being introduced to someone, but afterward, upon meeting up with that person again, to say "Nice seeing you." I suppose this is because we "meet" or are introduced to someone once (usually, barring Alzheimer's in the introducer), so it makes more sense to thereafter say "see" instead of "meet".
Did that make sense? It's very early in the morning, and I'm not sure of much before the second coffee.
I'm not sure of much before the second coffee.Hmmmm.... Is this a Starbucks advertisement?
I've noticed that even blind people, who can't literally say, "I see," or "I'm seeing someone," still use the expressions. Aye, the eyes have it, it seems.
Depending on what axis you want the parallelism to be seen from:
To take care of someone
This was done nicely in a sort of old Western parody with Andy Griffith(!) as the evil cattle baron explaining to one of his minions that when he said "take care of" the sodbuster that was complaining too loudly about the cattle trampling his garden he meant "kill him". Then, when his beautiful daughter, who was secretly in love with the sodbuster's son, came in, he told another minion to "take care of her", meaning get her to her part of the house and fed, or whatever. He had to stop the minion when he pulled his gun and started to threaten the daughter.
Put to sleep/put down
If it is an old and incurable pet it means one thing, if it's your darling baby daughter, it's something quite else.
I mean... it means I have a Significant Other.