“As a teenager, I often got the wrong end of the stick by thinking I was the centre of the universe. I was convinced that my potential was limitless; one day, I promised myself, I would be like King Midas, turning everything I touched to gold and recover the wealth of my people whose economy was decimated by my predecessors; I would go beyond King Canute and where he tried and failed, I would push back the sea tide; and while ostrich-like people around me buried their heads in the sand, I would take up the challenge of adversity, even if it seemed like I was tilting at windmills; as in the words of Shakespeare, I would gild the lily and improve even what seems to be perfect. In short, I was destined to re-write history. However, reality often checked my progress and showed me I was just another mortal who needed to work hard just to survive in this difficult and complex world. So, by the time I left school, I was saved by the bell and acquired a more realistic perspective on life.”
If this was a short extract from my memoirs, you may be tempted to judge me harshly (what an arrogant and pretentious fool!) or kindly (well, all teenagers have ideas above their stations).
Either way, you can relax because, the above paragraph is not an extract of anyone’s memoirs, I just made it up. In fact, I engineered it to include a number of idioms and clichés often used by us all but not quite in the right context.
Why am I blogging about this? Just to show off really! I have no higher purpose. So, how many idioms and clichés did you spot in the above extract? Here they are:
Wrong End of the Stick: we often use this expression to say that someone misunderstood a situation and acted upon this misunderstanding. The expression goes back to the days when toilets were just a hole in the ground which sooner or later would fill up with excrement. So, a stick would be kept by the hole to encourage human waste to sink deeper in the ground. However, if you were unfortunate enough to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and foolishly attempted to use the stick, you were liable to pick it up by the dirty end, so to speak. So, the expression was, and should still be, used to demonstrate someone getting a bad deal and losing out rather than misunderstanding a situation and jumping to the wrong conclusion.
King Midas Touch: don’t we all wish we had his touch? No, we do NOT! The poor man asked and was granted this special gift and sure enough, he was able to turn everything he touched to gold. However, he soon realised what a curse this gift was. First, he tragically turned his young daughter into gold and then discovered he could not eat anything because it too turned into gold before it even passed his mouth. I believe he asked for a reversal of this superpower and was granted it but, I cannot be 100% sure that things ended up happily for all concerned.
Decimated Economy: the word is so often used to describe that some mighty and dreadful force had destroyed something almost completely: the hurricane decimated the town; the pandemic decimated the economy; the fire decimated the entire building. As a matter of fact, if I was faced with a powerful force that decimated my wealth, home, even health, I would be thankful the damage was not all that bad. The word decimate is to reduce something by 10%, that’s all. It is derived from the word decimal, the system of counting using the base 10. Some Roman emperors decimated their own army when they lost a battle as a collective but controlled punishment. They literally lined up the defeated soldiers, took out every 10th man and executed him, thus reducing the entire army by 10% and serving a warning to the survivors to do better in the next battle.
King Canute The Great: King Canute The Great of Denmark, England and Norway had a bad press for far too long. People assign delusion and arrogance to his thinking that he could order the sea tide to go back. Nothing could be further from the truth. King Canute was surrounded by sycophants who kept on asserting that his powers were such that if he wished to, he could order the sea tide to retract. King Canute was so irritated by this outrageous assertion that he dragged his courtiers to the seaside and demonstrated to them that no matter how hard he tried; he was unable to push the tide back.
Ostrich’s Head in the Sand: It is a common phrase to describe those who avoid reality and paralysed by fear, end up burying their heads in the sand, hoping someone else would fix the problem. There is not a single shred of evidence that ostriches do that when faced with mortal danger. In any case, if ostriches did that on regular basis, they would be extinct by now because if their predators didn’t get them, then the suffocation by inhaling sand grains would finish them off.
Tilting at Windmills: This is an expression borrowed from the classic 17th Century novel Don Quixote by the great Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote who had aspirations to be a chivalrous nobleman, gradually descends into madness, but always with honourable intentions, imagines windmills in the distance as evil giants so, he charges at the windmills with his long lance tilted at the right angle poised to attack, only to discover they are actually windmills. The expression ‘Tilting at Windmills’ has often been used to describe paranoid behaviour of someone fighting imaginary enemies, which over-looks the many factors at play in the novel that forced Don Quixote to behave in the manic manner he did.
Gilding the Lily: by taking something already perfect and tampering with it, hoping to make it better. William Shakespeare came close to creating this expression but did not. It is believed it was an American publication that first introduced the term ‘gilding the lily’ by misquoting Shakespeare’s from a text in King John, describing the effort to improve on perfection. Here is part of the text:
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow…
Strange how any of the above text could have been adopted, with the same impact, in mainstream language, especially ‘to paint the lily’ but, the one that survives to this day is a misquotation!
Re-writing History: I can just about get my head round the expression ‘writing history’ indicating someone’s unique achievements that warrant inclusion in future history records. Since history books are written retrospectively, it is entirely possible that such achievements may be surpassed on more than one occasion, thus confining many achievements to the dustbins of history. History is only re-written by academics to correct errors or by dramatic change of regime where the new rulers do not like how history books portrayed the past and move to alter the books to fit in with their un-challengeable authority. As for re-writing history through altering the facts on the ground well, good luck with going back in time to do some re-writing. Although the plot in the movie ‘Back to the Future’ managed it, let’s remember it was only a movie.
Saved by the Bell: Two aspects of modern life seem to have inadvertently adopted this expression. The first is the universal school routine of signalling the beginning and end of classes by ringing a bell. So, a pupil who is in a spot of difficulty with a teacher for not handing in his/her homework or is unable to answer questions like ‘name the wives of Henry VIII’ or ‘what is the formula for working out the area of a circle?’ is saved by the bell ringing to signal the end of that class and with it, a last minute reprieve for the hapless pupil. The second is the sport of boxing whereby one boxer is close to being knocked out by an opponent after receiving a good punch and about to be overwhelmed by a barrage of punches likely to knock him out. The 3-minute round is declared to be over in the middle of this destructive attack and the losing boxer is saved by the bell to go back to his corner for some rest and instructions by the trainers on how to deal with his opponent in the next round. Neither example owns the origins of this expression. The true origins are far more sinister and with little hope of having the desired effect. For centuries, dead people were buried with a cord in their hand, or mouth, that extended outside the coffin and over ground where the other end was tied to a bell that hung over the grave. Should the buried person turn out to have only passed out or was in a coma, suddenly woke up to find him/herself buried alive, they could raise the alarm by tugging at the bell, requesting to be dug up. I tried but could not find any statistics to show how many, if any, were rescued that way. Nevertheless, those who could afford it, requested such a contraption be included in their burial package. I did however come across newspaper adverts from a century or so ago that still offered this option to customers.
So, there you have it. The strange thing is this: if you go back and read the original extract at the beginning of this piece, you still get an overall understanding of what the writer is trying to convey, even with all of the above nine idioms and clichés being slightly or completely off target.
Stay Covid Free.
Mufid Sukkar – July 2020
