Just another column about Language

Jul 18, 2022 4 min read

From time to time, I just stop; then take note of our wonderfully confounding English language.

Today is one of those times.

I’ve often questioned why we use phrases like “jump in the shower” when nobody jumps into showers.

Likewise, I’ve never known anybody who truly “hops out of bed.”

I’ve never been in the company of somebody who got “hopping mad” – or managed to “fly off the handle.”

Do people really “hit the sack” or “hit the hay?”

These are the tricks the English language plays on us with the countless idioms that have been devised, then used – sometimes over centuries.

If there’s a “bandwagon” nearby, try not to “jump on it.” That could be dangerous.

Never, I mean never, “bury your head in the sand.”

Fortunately, if you plan to “bury the hatchet,” it doesn’t involve a real hatchet that could inflict real harm on another person.

I’m sure there are some people who read this and say this is silly. But I’d like to “burst your bubble” and tell you that English is full of these idioms that must be daunting to anybody who comes from another country who’d like to learn the language.

Can you imagine trying to explain to somebody from Asia that a “skeleton” in somebody’s “closet,” has nothing to do with skeletons or closets?

That would be no “walk in the park!”

Don’t take a foreigner to lunch and tell them that you’re so hungry you “could eat a horse.”

They’d be perplexed.

They may even be “in a pickle.” They could even “fly off the handle” and “hit the roof” – which has nothing to do with roofs or handles, or even pickles.

That same foreigner might be fascinated when they hear that somebody was “born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

Where would that spoon come from, they might ask.

And you would be compelled to explain that the person with the silver spoon, may have been on third base, and thought they hit a triple. Which requires a completely different explanation.

References to the human heart are among the most overused phrases in the English language.

There are “broken” hearts; “heavy” hearts, from the “bottom” of people’s hearts; somebody may become “faint” of heart; we’re always told “home is where the heart is;” some people can be “warm”-hearted, while others can be “cold”-hearted. And you can “take” heart, with a little heart and soul.

None of those things have anything to do with the physical organs that beat inside of our bodies.

I think the overuse of the word “heart,” is some sort of language abuse.

I think I’ll just “throw down the gauntlet” and let everybody know I’m “ticked off” about it.

Maybe I won’t. I’d probably get some “butterflies in my stomach,” or worse – “ants in my pants,” about protesting the way we Americans have taken such idiomatic license with language.

What does “smack dab” mean?

To me, it’s a phrase that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I know I’m probably being a bit too literal, but if you have a dab, why would you want to smack it?

I’d suggest if you feel compelled to stick the phrase “smack dab” into a sentence (not counting the way I just did it) then, perhaps, you might first try to find a more suitable phrase. “That’s not brain surgery,” you know.

I’d also suggest you avoid using rhyming phrases like “easy peasy.”

There are many phrases that have nothing to do with how they sound.

“Thin-skinned” has nothing to do with skin.

A “tall order” has nothing to do with height.

A “snow job” has nothing to do with weather.

Playing “second fiddle” has nothing to do with music.

A “stiff upper lip” has nothing to do with anybody’s face.

“Green thumbs” don’t have anything to do with the color of anybody’s thumbs.

And, finally, if something is a “piece of cake,” it has nothing, whatsoever to do with dessert.

That’s the “nail in the coffin.”

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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