English has many idiomatic phrases that refer to animals. There are certainly too many for one post. For this one, I picked four animals that each appear in two different phrases in my collection. As it turns out, in most cases, experts are not certain about the phrase origin. In some cases, non-experts have put forth some truly unbelievable stories. They can be the most fun.
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October seems a good time to look at phrases and idioms about macabre subjects such as death and, well, the not quite dead. Many people find the subject of death so disturbing, even terrifying, that they need to find some less troublesome synonym, whether it makes any sense or not. If the phrase is somehow humorous, so much the better. And what if, after the burial of the corpse, its spirit (or to use the earlier English word ghost) hangs around to haunt a place? That’s even scarier. Ghosts have long enjoyed a prominent place in popular culture, but lately zombies seem even more popular. I haven’t found a lot of idioms about zombies and vampires, but ‘tis the season to examine word origins.
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We have to eat. We have to talk. So of course we have lots of food phrases and idioms. Some of them even have something to do with eating. A lot of times, though we use food as a metaphor for something else entirely. I have assembled an entire menu of foods from main course to dessert and the way they influence our language. Sorry, you’ll need to provide your own drink this time.
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Search “writing conventions,” and you will find them defined as technical rules and standards that writers must follow if they want anyone to read and understand their work. “Rules” and “must” seem like fighting words these days, but like it or not, proper writing still matters and it still depends on writing conventions. I remember years ago (pre-web, even) hearing someone on the radio gleefully describing a doctoral dissertation in English. According to the dissertation, rules of grammar and other writing conventions no longer matter. People can communicate in writing just fine without them. After all, look at advertisements, billboards, comic books, and all kinds of other writing that would never pass an English class. Why gleeful? The man on the radio pointed out that the author had to observe all those proper writing conventions in order to get his dissertation accepted by the graduate college. What are conventions? Among other things, “convention” means a kind of behavior that most people in a society consider correct or proper, a traditional method or style. For example, it used to be that everyone wore hats whenever they went out in public. Americans, at least, no longer follow that convention, but we still … Continue reading →
What is an allusion? In writing, it’s when an author makes an indirect reference to some, person, place, thing, bit of literature, or other idea that originates from outside his or her text. It hints at something readers are expected to know. So the author doesn’t explicitly tell what it is. Allusion can effectively reinforce the message or theme of a work without explaining it.
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