Our colorful language again!

Nov 1, 2021 4 min read

I’m beside myself with … Hey, wait!

I can’t possibly be beside myself.

That’s physiologically impossible.

So is when you tell somebody to, “watch your mouth.”

They’re a couple of terms Americans use in our thriving arsenal of idioms.

Stuff that can’t be taken literally.

Back in June, I wrote a column about how our daily language would be difficult for foreigners or Martians to understand.

This is the sequel.

Here goes.

When somebody says they are “making their bed,” they aren’t constructing a bed. They’re putting their bed in order. Nobody ever says, “I’m going to go put my bed in order.”

And when somebody claims the person to whom they’re speaking has, “made their bed” – that they must now “sleep in it” – there’s usually no bed in sight.

I’ve always wondered why it’s appropriate to say somebody is “getting into bed,” when all they’re doing is getting ON it.

I’m not a “stickler” for proper language. I don’t even know what a “stickler” is. If you happen to find a “stickler,” please send me one.

I don’t know who those people are, who stand in frying pans. I do know they’ve been warned not to “jump from the frying pan into the fire.”

A terrifying and painful waste of time if you ask me.

NOTE: Nobody has ever asked me.

My teeth are without skin.

They’re skinless.

So, please don’t tell me you think I got by on “the skin of my teeth.”

I know that from time to time, I put “my best foot forward.” Alternatively, I “put one foot in front of the other,” because, I suppose, there’s no other way to walk.

American English is full of terms that don’t mean what they sound like.

We don’t walk “down” the street if the pavement is flat, do we?

People still have no compunctions about adjusting the directions of things. When down can mean “up” – and up can sometimes mean “down.”

Don’t believe me?

If you live in Uniontown, you may have heard people say they’re going “down” to Pittsburgh – even though it’s north of Uniontown.

Or, you may hear people say they’re going “up” to Morgantown – which is south.

Language is fun. I try to use it all of the time.

But I’m sometimes confounded by its less than direct representations of some things.

Have you ever truly been “at the end of your rope?”

What did that feel like?

Do you suppose anybody has ever suffered from an occasion when a “cat got their tongue?”

The only way that could happen is if somebody “let the cat out of the bag.”

But why was the cat in that darned bag to begin with?

Were you playing “cat and mouse” with it?

Do you (or anybody) live in a “dog eat dog” world, where people always fight like “dogs and cats?”

And then they get “dog-tired,” and, consequently, they get as “sick as a dog.”

When it rains, why do people say it’s raining “cats and dogs?”

I’ve never seen a cat or a dog rain.

Have you?

People are often accused of “putting the cart before the horse.” Or, getting something “straight from the horse’s mouth.” Or not being able to “teach an old dog new tricks.” I wonder what would happen if you tried to teach an “old dog” OLD tricks.

Just a thought.

I’ve asked this question before. But why do animals contribute so much to our colorful language?

While on the subject of our colorful language, whenever you cut through a lot of “red tape,” it could be called a “red letter” day, unless the “red tape” you’re cutting through is somebody else’s money and you get caught “red-handed.”

Once in a “blue moon,” I get the “blues,” when I suspect the “walls have ears.”

That’s a time when I have to “keep my ear to the ground,” despite that being nearly impossible at my age.

I guess it’s time to finish this diatribe.

I’m going to have to (ugh) “hit the sack.”

Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.

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