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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Election season is upon us again. We have to suffer through a few months of television commercials and other unpleasantness. Quite a few colorful phrases have become associated with politicians and political candidates. Maybe looking at the meaning and origin of some of them will ease the pain for at least a little while.
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Every January 1, the calendar rolls over to a new year. For more than a century, cartoonists have used the image of a bearded old man for the old year and a baby for the new year. We can look forward to the new year with anticipation or dread. We can view the old year as a good year or a rotten year best forgotten. Except we can’t really forget. The English language also keeps memory of the old and obsolete. We constantly use popular phrases long after the conditions that cause them have become obsolete. Some recall very old technology and others more recent. But by this time, we have to appeal to history to know where they came from.
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