So I just finished a course on language, and it’s gotten me thinking about phrases. In particular are the ones which we use without knowledge of its actual meaning (if such a thing exists).
So my experiment is this:
What are some phrases which we take for granted?
Can we find an etomology?
Can we create any cool new phrases?
One I find odd is 'Turn a blind eye to it’. If one is blind, what good will turning the blind eye in the direction of the event do? There won’t be any perceptible difference…
What about ‘by the way’. If I wish to indicate to someone I’m going to refer to something either from our conversational past, or something which escaped my own memory for a while, why on earth would I say ‘by the way’. What is it by this way (either 1-way street conceptualization or some sort of methodology) exactly, and how does it help us? It would be like saying ‘Hey beside the building, did you know that Susan said I was a hipster dufus?’
I have always been curious about religious phrases that permeate the US english language. Any of the Holy phrases make my mind giggle
Such as
Jesus H. Christ! / what exactly was Jesus’s middle name or what does the H. stand for?
Holy Shit! If it exists why are’nt the marketing companies selling it?
Holy F***! I don’t even want to picture this one. Although National Geographic might do it justice.
Holy Hell! Kind of crosses each other out don’t you think? Does this mean you really have nothing to say?
Goddamnit,!! As in Goddamnit, will you stop/ don’t do that. I have seen numerous children and adults named this and a few animals too. So is it a curse or a name?
Holy Hell in a hand basket ,or the other, Gone to Hell in a hand basket.
Ok, hell takes deliveries in hand baskets?
Heaven Help…! Yea right, that is what supposedly put you in this mess in the first place. hah Beggers can’t be choosers, to use another phrase of interest.
God help me. Refer to the above
For God’s sake/ now this one is truly the most curious one. why does god need you to help on behalf of his sake?
The list goes on but these are the top curiousty one that come to mind. if anyone knows the wheres or whys, I would be truly interested.
Yeah the religious ones always sort of through my for a loop. I hadn’t pictured divine Fcing until now though.
Imp,
“That depends” is sort of interesting, as when used as a conjunction, it really doesn’t make the most sense, in the most commonly used sense. For instance:
“Hey why does stuff do things?”
"Well that depends, do you mean… "
It almost always leads to a question, which seems odd in a semantic sense to me, as a variable conjunct.
It seems to me there are modern phrases which are so oft-used their original meanings have been forgotten.
Especially, “literally”. It gets used recently (by newspeople!) where someone should say “virtually”. This topic is literally a pig in a poke!
How about the phrase “out of order” on a vending machine. Does it mean the machine doesn’t work because it’s damaged, or that your order cannot be filled by the empty machine? What then does it mean on the door of a restroom stall?
How about something as simple as, “First come, first _____”. Is it “…served”? Makes more sense than the occasionally said “…serve”.
Finally, as for new phrases, please please please, someone make a new English word for the French “hors d’oeurvres”. The French is easily misspelled, and is difficult to say correctly without knowing French (imo). Why don’t people just call them “appetisers”? Are they served without appetising guests for a following meal?
Thanks for the opportunity to rant.
Save our English language.
I think that all languages are mathematical in a way because every language that has a verb has an algebraic sequence of verb tenses. But then again some languages are more “mathematical” than others (like Spanish for instance). You will find that the more “mathematical” languages are the ones that are descended from the Romans and the Greeks.
English is probably the hardest language to take up as a second language for people of other linguistic backgrounds.
Spanish is descended from Latin, being a romance language.
What do you mean by mathematical? One about circles and numbers?
Perhaps you are thinking of highly-inflected languages – as is Russian as well. I’m not sure, but this might be a similarity common to older indo-european languages. But yes, inflected languages cause one to think more grammatically, they say. (And then one can ignore word position a little, or use it for emphasis.)
I think its odd when people say to someone whos old pensioner friend or relative just died at 90 or thereabouts “Im sorry” or “Im really sorry” . Why would you apologize for someone dying at a reasonable age ? Their going to die at some point , its like saying to someone “death should,nt exist,we need to eradicate death” . At what point do people stop apologizing ?
If people one day manage to live much much longer and in the future most folk die at 230 will we still say “Im sorry” ? How about when the average age is 500 ? By saying sorry are,nt we just apologizing for the existance of death ? Perhaps in some way people saying their sorry when someone else dies reflects their innate evil as portrayed by the roman catholic church and their ability to follow Tony Blair
