Has anybody else thought about how strange some phrases are?"Winging it", and late, as in the late Dale Earnhart, are the ones I wonder upon most.My father and I looked up late in the dictionary, and decided definition 3(recently) explained it, although late can be used in the same context as former. Strange. I still haven't found out where winging it comes from. jimthedog
There was in the 30's a type of dancing waving both elbows as though they were wings flapping, and by extension "winging it" meant dancing that way.I think the phrase "buck and wing" was used even in the 20's.
Several languages have respectful ways of making it clear that the person mentioned is no longer living. "The late..." is the most common English one.
Oh dear, I AM posting a lot tonight. I shall cease and desist after this one, I promise.
I heard an expression many moons ago which I loved and use constantly (probably to the annoyance of all my acquaintance). If I'm referring to someone who's died, I usually say "so-and-so, who's dead at the moment". Watching the facial microexpressions of my interlocutors as they work that one through is priceless!
"dead at the moment"
I like that one, CapK. Expresses a beautiful, almost surreal faith in future technologies...!
And the base expression, jimthedog, gives rise to that lovely saying in England that "Fred'll even be late for his own funeral!"
and then there's the other old favourite...
'he'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on'
and my personal favourite, 'running around like a headless chicken'
But it is extremely unlikely that any young person today has ever seen a hen have its head cut off, or had to do the very disagreeable job of plucking off ALL the feathers to get it ready for cooking.
But it is extremely unlikely that any young person today has ever seen a hen have its head cut offThat depends on your definition of "young". This 33 year old remembers having to the legs of poultry while his older stepbrother decapitated them, and remembers being hugely entertained by watching them even manage to fly for up to 90 seconds or so afterwards. I suspect that the hateful job of plucking was karmic revenge for having laughed at the headless birds.
Well, I'm 21 and I once helped my mother and grandparents pluck chickens. I agree, wwh--it
is quite disagreeable. I can't claim to have seen a hen have its head cut off, however. I just don't think I could handle the trauma.
Could turn you into a vegetarian!
wow
How about "got gawown"...as in "got gone". The first time I heard it was from a little mountain girl I was talking to while her Mother seined minnows from a creek for the bait we needed. They were both barefooted. I thought the mother of the little puppies (who was absent) has gotten a disease I had never heard of...of course it meant she wasn't there any more. I had only lived in the area for 2 months...found out it not uncommon in my little city either!
One of the family myths was about the housewife who complained the grocery delivery boy had 'been and gone and not come.'
...have its head cut off, however. I just don't think I could handle the trauma.
and Could turn you into a vegetarian!
I was fancinated by the live poultry market as a child-- is was set up as small factory-- you chose a chicken, the chickens feet were put into a vice, the butcher cut off the chickens head, and immediately hung it by the vise on its feet-- and from then on, it was automated-- there was a machine with rubber "fingers" that plucked the chicken...
I always wanted my mother to buy a fresh chicken.. (but my dad was a butcher and he bought all the meat for the household)...
I was never around chickens enough when they were alive to develop any feeling for them. The process was mechanical, and the death was swift-- I liked seeing how live chickens turned into food.-- growing up in the city, i was disconnect from how most food was produced.
I just thought that having sin in sincere seems strange.
jimthedog
P.S. If you don't recognize it, it's from the musical The Music Man.
In the first year of Latin I learned that sincere meant "without wax" referring to an ancient Roman custom of cheating by filling defects in marble with wax to hide them.
So the only sin in sincere is working some scam while pretending to be honest.
I should have guessed it was from Latin. I wish that they still taught Latin. Probably everyone else would hate it though.
jimthedog
Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be.
First it killed the Romans, and now it's killing me.
looks like I coined jimthedoggerel too soon.
oh well, how about wwhatcrambo?!
Yes, it does seem like everyone else hated Latin. Anyway, what about "a shot in the arm"? I always thought of that like getting punched , or maybe poisoned, but a commercial on the radio uses it as if you're getting medicine.
jimthedog
I thought sincere was from a later date-- and refered to alchemy--
where a small ball of gold was covered with some wax, and then rolled in lead dust. and the "alchemist" could make the lead go through "sublimations" of fire (with some magic words) and turn the lead into gold... (gee, i wonder how they did that?)
some alchemist were also con artist--and would "sell the secrets of turning lead into gold" and skip town before some on realized that in couldn't been done sincerely!
even if it dates from the ancient romans, it got a boost from alchemists!
Anyway, what about "a shot in the arm"? I always thought of that like getting punched , or maybe poisoned, but a commercial on the radio uses it as if you're getting medicine
I've always associated the phrase with the idea of vaccinations, like the TB vaccinations that used to be given to all 13 year-olds here in NZ - a literal shot in the arm. Here at least, the phrase conveys the idea of a boost, a pick-me-up.
>a boost, a pick-me-up
thus, for my uncle (a barkeep), the first drink of the day.
I should have guessed it was from Latin. I wish that they still taught Latin. Probably everyone else would hate it though.
Hate to tell you this, Jimbo, but good schools DO still teach Latin ...
In reply to:
Hate to tell you this, Jimbo, but good schools DO still teach Latin ...
Well, my school is getting worse. As of last year we had a French teacher, but she retired, or someting, so all the French students had to switch to Spanish. And probably the good schools are too expensive.
jimthedog
schools DO still teach Latin
Indeedy they do! Our School Union High School -- which covers the small N. H. Seacoast towns -- has Latin class and a Latin Club.
{Puffing up with pride emoticon she noted that her Godson, Michael, received honors in Latin}
He found it most useful on a Senior trip (each student self financed) to Italy.
Dominus vobiscum, all.
wow
Well, its true, they are, inspite of what politician tell you, decreasing the qualities of school.
I think, part of the problems is, we, (americans) don't really value children. I thinks some parents value their kids-- and sometimes act as if their kids could do no wrong-- but as a group, (adults) don't value children (as a group).
I live in nice middle class neighborhood-- but our local school was falling to peices-- and there was never any money in the budget to get something done, till one day- half of one of the walls collapsed into the school yard! Fortunately, there weren't any children in the school or yard at the time.
Still, Scott, you have several choices.. you are bright- and you could begin to learn latin on your own. there are latin clubs-- and no doubt, there are even latin bulletin boards, or web sites..
You might even find, that there are teachers in your school who know latin, and would be pleased to help you learn it. there are several people on this bulletin board who know and use latin-- you could be really nice to them... (Lucky you, I am not one of them!)
and you'll find, most dictionaries have an section in back-- with common latin words and phrases.. so you could begin to learn some things from tools at hand.
I have never taken a course in anatomy-- but when i fell, and broke a bone-- (and i knew it was broken before it was x-rayed) i knew which bone it was.. I sort of liked the idea that all the bones had names, and learned most of them... (much easier than latin, since there are only 200 some odd bones, and some like metacarpsuls get repeated.. vertibre, and phalanges, too) but the point is, it doesn't matter that your school is less than perfect and doesn't teach latin... you still can learn it.
And probably the good schools are too expensive.
I beg to differ. Yes, the best schools are usually private ones, but there are 4 or 5 very good public school districts in my area. One of the schools was ranked nationally and another of the communities was at the top of a nicest-places-to-live-in-the-US list. Unfortunately though, there is obviously a correlation between income and school success.
I tried finding someone who knew Latin last summer just before school started, but I didn't find anyone. Probably didn't look hard enough. One complaint, though. jimthedogII is the one who signs as Scott. I don't mind. Our usernames are almost exactly the same.
jimthedog
New Hampshire is struggling with making schools across the state more equal in oportunity for learning ... and an idea from Legislature that taxing people in communities percieved to be more affluent should pay more school tax which would be used in poorer school district. Sounds good? What a mess. My town percieved to be one of the affluent towns because of cost of homes here which is because it's on the short seacoast. But there are lots of people in town struggling -- holding down two jobs apiece -- and a nearby town got some of the money and they used it to reduce taxes instead of putting it into schools.
Arrrrgggghhhh.
Don't get me started. Oh, I did?
Sorry.
wow
No, I'm the one who signs "Anu Garg"
-Anu Garg
learning Latin
I fear, O Helena, you are too sanguine in your advice to IacobusCanis. I take it from your comments you did not study Latin. I did, and I can tell you I doubt very much that anyone can do it on his own, no matter how hard he tries. It's too different from English; there are grammatical and syntactical concepts that are utterly foreign to the English speaker, even if he has a perfect command of the language.
So, Jimthedog, if you really want to learn Latin, I suggest you get yourself a text book (Bennet's New Latin Grammar is a classic and the one we used in my class long ago) and find someone who can offer some tutoring. If you are intelligent and you work very hard at it (I had Latin class one full hour every day in school and 2 hours homework every night, including Friday) you can get by with a minimum of help from the tutor -- just enough to get you over the stuff you will encounter which is totally foreign in concept.
But be warned. I was part of an elite accelerated program and we learned everything at a much more intensive and accelerated rate than normal classes. It took us one full school year to learn the basic Latin grammar and do some reading in Caesar's Gallic Wars, the famous book that begins, "Omnia Gallia divisa est in partes tres." We took the first 3 weeks in the following year to learn some fairly abstruse grammar concepts (including gerunds, the subject of recent posts), then tackled Cicero. When we began our third year, we took 2 weeks to learn the rules of poetry, the figures of speech, etc., then spent all year reading the Aeneid. So you can't learn it overnight, or even overyear, and that's with teachers wiht a PhD who spent a lifetime teaching Latin.
Having said which, I now say, by all means, try it. Even if you don't master it, you'll learn something and you'll get a lot out of it.
No-- it was dropped as "honor course" requirement as i entered HS--I was the kind of kid who wanted to do the least i could in school when it came languages.. I was perfectly willing to put in the time for math and chemistry (back in pre-pocket calcutator days) but i am old enough to have learned "church latin"-- and can still "sing" a mass in latin (if you call the croaking, off key sound that come out of my mouth as singing!) So i have learned latin vocabulary-- which is very useful for understanding words and roots-- and have, of course, picked up latin words and phrases.
I sent Jim a private note-- (I thought he might live in NYC) since latin is still taught in several NYC public schools-- my daughter commuted from queens to manhattan for HS, since the local school (an outstanding school!-- with lots of westinghouse/Intel science winners) was not to her liking. My ex (a teacher!) didn't like the idea of her commuting over 1 hour each day to get to school- but she loved it, and thought it worth the effort.
but a hearty mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa if seem to imply learning latin was easy!
LatinMy school was a public high school (
really public, not the reversed terminology used in England), although one of the better ones (i.e. concentrated on the languages and arts rather than science and commerce subjects). This may be a nonsensical distinction today.
It was expected that we would learn Latin, although it wasn't required. I learned it for three years and only dropped it because I had to choose between doing three languages and doing two languages and geography at sixth form level.
Looking back, it was probably the one subject which I have found the most consistently useful after leaving school. From my perspective, that makes it virtually unassailable as one of the "must learn" subjects!