Here are some common images, metaphors, and foreign phrases. (a) What is their metaphorical/everyday meaning? (b) What was their original, literal meaning? (For foreign phrases, what is their literal translation, and how is it connected to their current meaning?)
I and many of my friends find these sorts of things amusing. I hope you do too. Please suggest other phrases for inclusion. I'm particularly looking for phrases more modern than I am.
What does it mean for someone or something to ...
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Here are some commonly-found foreign phrases. For each, state its meaning to us, its literal translation, and how the two are connected.
Here are some terms which seem to be connected to each other, or might be connected to each other. Are they? If so, what is the connection (e.g., in a common origin)? If not, how did they independently arise?
Here are some general questions without any common theme.
If people can be disgruntled, can they also be gruntled?
Whenever my father thought that something was inconvenient to do at the moment, he would say, "Not tonight, Josephine." I assume this was the punch line of a joke, a joke winding up with Napoleon refusing to make love with Josephine, but I've never found anyone who knows the joke. Can you identify it for me?
I've noticed that almost all English words with the sound, "unk" in them have some sort of clumsy, crude, or negative connotation. Examples: skunk, drunk, funk, bunk, hunk, punk, lunk, dunk, sunk. (Counterexamples: uncle, monk.) This seems to fly in the face of the traditional linguistic tenet that there is no necessary connection between a word and its sound, that is (if my French and semiotics are accurate), between langue and parole. Is there a good explanation for this pattern?
Here's a cute essay I found floating around the web:
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is"UP."
It's easy to understand UP as a direction, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time,
but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.............
Time to shut UP!
1. The meaning and origin of many of these (and many others) can be found in The Reader's Encyclopedia by William Rose Benet.
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