Idioms Tell Volumes About Us

Idioms Tell Volumes About Us

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Whether we call them idioms, colloquialisms, or odd expressions, they load the English language with terms that confound teachers and learners alike.  The more they are repeated and used publicly, the more idioms are likely to take root in our psyche and become a shortcut for deceptive meanings.  

Simply defined, an idiom is a phrase whose meaning is hard to predict from its parts. It cannot be taken literally.  Say you are an English language learner and I tell you I am sick as a dog.  This phrase comes from the 17^th century, but as a “newbie” to English, you might wonder why this is so bad.  Actually, dogs are known for vomiting frequently.  If I tell you this means being under the weather, meanings grow even more confusing.  Maybe I am just trying to escape bad weather because it is raining cats and dogs.  Or maybe I could be cured by some hair of the dog, also known as alcohol.  

Where do we find idioms?  Largely in everyday or colloquial conversations.  Their mates are slang, contractions, and profanity.  Despite never taking Latin in school (wish I had), and failing dismally at crossword puzzles, I really enjoy idioms.  Recently I made a list of those I use frequently.  I kept a cell phone recorder nearby because they disappear into “thin air” (yet another idiom). 

A review of the list surprised me.  Animal references are favorites.  My summer is filled with dog days, often I am dog tired, perhaps because I get up at sparrow’s fart (really early, thanks to the British).  Doggonit, I will always believe in puppy love, and I find it is never too late to teach an old dog new tricks.

 Efforts like this make me sweat like a stuck pig.  Still, I sleep as snug as a bug in a rug and never let bed bugs bite.   I regard despicable people as lower than whale waste.  I prefer to avoid those whose mouths run like a whippoorwill’s butt, preferring not to meet them in a dog’s age.  Lately, when I wash my hands of problems, I am likely to utter under my breath, “Not my circus, not my monkeys”. Sometimes caught between a rock and a hard place, or not seeing the forest through the trees, I decide there is more than one way to skin a cat.  

Living here in western New York, I belabor the weather.  Favorite idioms come from my dad who was an inveterate coastal fisherman.  Good weather could be predicted from the sailor’s delight of a red sky at night. However, the same in the morning always meant that sailors should take warning.  And “mackerel sky, not long wet nor yet long dry” predicts changeable conditions, which can include fog “thick a blue dungeon.”

Two of the more colorful expressions cemented into my memory come my Air Force experience teaching English in Vietnam. A Louisiana bunk mate used to crack me up when he complained, “That is harder than stuffing a pad of butter up a wildcat’s butt with a hot knitting needle.” On another occasion our commanding officer drove our jeep barely under the landing gear of an incoming C-123.  As we breathed a sign of relief, he turned and said, “Well, no guts no glory.”  I still use that idiom in hairy situations.

I fall back on language from the Bible all the time, thanks to my dad’s religious upbringing.  I find myself advising:  ask and ye shall receive; as ye sew so shall ye reap; there but for the grace of God go I.; and let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Certain life style expressions have become idioms of choice in my household.  Included are:  persistence always triumphs; what goes around comes around; first paint the target, then shoot the arrow; cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; the horse is out of the barn; and if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. And when something really puzzles us, for some reason we say, “No kidding Dick Tracy!” 

Our idioms tell volumes about our origins, what we read or see on tv, and the people who have influenced us.  I suggest you draw up a list and share it with your relatives and friends.  You might find yourself moon struck or gob smacked at the end of the day.