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Downtown 
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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 Posted - 10/04/2006 : 23:48:10
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quote:
Originally posted by Whippersnapper
quote:
Originally posted by MguyX
"Green behind the ears" is simply a misquote of "wet behind the ears." Anyone else know what it means?
If its just a misquote then its misquoted an awful lot. Google gives 16,300 examples of "green behind the ears", admittedly a lot less than "wet behind the ears" but still, a lot for a simple misquote.
It's certainly an expression I have heard since I was very young, and it strikes me that corn has ears and is green when unripe so there may be some connection?! Of course this doesn't explain why it's green behind the ears, but "green in the ears" could have become corrupted over the years.
It's not so much a "misquote" as it is an improper combination of two expressions that mean the same thing: "He's still green," alluding to a fruit that hasn't ripened yet, and "wet behind the ears," which has already been explained. When you look at it that way, it's understandable how the mistake could occur, but it's still a pretty foolish mistake...but then again, there are a lot of foolish people out there. I frequently use the expression "this should be easy, it's not rocket surgery," which is another combination of two expressions that mean the same thing, except I'm doing it on purpose to make a joke...but 9 times out of 10, nobody gets the joke or even realizes that what I said makes no sense. |
Edited by - Downtown on 10/05/2006 00:24:03 |
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Sal[Au]pian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/05/2006 : 01:55:14
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| "Many a mickle makes a muckle" is both almost meaningless even idiomatically and technically inaccurate. I guess it sort of means that smaller units combine to create larger units, but it doesn't seem to have a specific context (such as positive advice or a warning). And the main thing is that a mickle is the same as a muckle. |
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/05/2006 : 01:56:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Downtown
I'm doing it on purpose to make a joke...but 9 times out of 10, nobody gets the joke or even realizes that what I said makes no sense.
I do this all the time too, and people similarly do not get it.  |
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Downtown
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 10/05/2006 : 02:34:42
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| Twenty years from now it will be a common expression and people will be discussing it in a thread like this. |
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turrell 
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
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Posted - 10/05/2006 : 08:26:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Downtown
I frequently use the expression "this should be easy, it's not rocket surgery," which is another combination of two expressions that mean the same thing, except I'm doing it on purpose to make a joke...but 9 times out of 10, nobody gets the joke or even realizes that what I said makes no sense.
You'd think people would get that after all "Does the Pope shit in the woods?" |
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Downtown
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 10/05/2006 : 14:13:41
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| Dilbert had a three-strip series the first half of this week that fits into this conversation quite nicely. There's a new guy at the office who comes from a place with many colorful folk sayings...at first, I was all over that like a caterpiller on my Sunday pants. But trying to understand what the character was saying eventually left me more flustered than a barefoot squirrel in a tire store. |
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MguyXXVI
"X marks the spot"
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Posted - 10/15/2006 : 04:13:49
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| Kind of like a bear chasing a hot dog. |
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randall 
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 10/18/2006 : 20:05:57
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"I could care less" gets me too, almost as much as "irregardless." Then there are the many, many, many people who think "begging the question" means "raising the question," rather than "using a debatable point as proof of itself."
Now then.
"Now then." Isn't our language funny? |
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mampers11 
"Lazy Lebowski Loses Rug"
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Posted - 10/18/2006 : 22:04:02
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[/quote]
You'd think people would get that after all "Does the Pope shit in the woods?"
[/quote]
How come no one says "Is a bear Catholic?" No one thought of that would they.
Mampers
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Wheelz
"FWFR%u2019ing like it%u2019s 1999"
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Posted - 10/18/2006 : 22:14:05
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall
"I could care less" gets me too, almost as much as "irregardless." Then there are the many, many, many people who think "begging the question" means "raising the question," rather than "using a debatable point as proof of itself."
Randall, I maintain that those are examples not of misuse, but of evolution of the language.
"Irregardless" has actually been in common use for nearly a century and appears in many dictionaries. "I could care less" is a sarcastic comment meant to be taken ironically. In either case, when somebody says these things, people know what they mean. Isn't that the whole point of language to begin with?
As for "begging the question," I'll quote a thoughtful essay which appeared recently in the Chicago Tribune:
There's no need to beg when asking the obvious question
By Nathan Bierma
Special to the Tribune
Published September 27, 2006
Q. Are you as maddened by the ever increasing misuse of the phrase "begs the question"? My understanding has always been that "begging the question" means to avoid the real issue, not that something begs for a question to be asked.
-- Steve Rooney, Chicago
A. The original meaning of "begging the question" was to base your argument on unspoken assumption. The phrase is a rough translation of the Latin phrase "petitio principii" (meaning "seeking the beginning [question]").
If you argue, "She is innocent, because she would never do something like that," then you're begging the question. You were supposed to demonstrate how to arrive at the conclusion that she is innocent, but instead you just assumed that the conclusion was true along.
"Beg the question" has gradually expanded to generally mean "raises the question," whether or not someone's logic is faulty.
For example, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote last month that the Cardinals' losing streak "helped beg the question whether the Cardinals are merely slumping or being exposed [as a bad team]." Here, "beg" just meant "raised."
"All the evidence has shown that the usage and the meaning have forked and that there exist two or three meanings for the expression `beg the question,'" says Grant Barrett, author of "The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English" (McGraw-Hill, 412 pages, $14.95). "All of them have more than 100 years in the written record."
Most usage guides assume people who say "begs" to mean "raises" are misusing the phrase out of ignorance -- and indeed, the "logical fallacy" sense is not widely known. But Barrett says people have not come up with this new meaning out of thin air; they have connected it to the original meaning.
"I think it's no surprise that, probably through reanalysis (what others call misinterpretation) of a phrase they didn't understand, English speakers found a far more common way to put the phrase to use," Barrett wrote in an e-mail. "I mean, really, how many of us outside of a logic and rhetoric class our freshman year have a use for the logical fallacy sense of `beg the question'?"
The New Oxford American Dictionary, in a note in its entry for "beg," says "begs the question" must have morphed from "assuming the conclusion" to "avoiding the real question" to, finally, "raising an obvious question."
You can easily replace "begs" with "raises" if you think "begs" is bad, but you might lose that sense of how urgent and essential the unasked question is. The question isn't just related; it's begging to be asked.
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Edited by - Wheelz on 10/18/2006 22:50:28 |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 10/19/2006 : 01:49:54
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I would probably be considered moderate [in NYC, where I live] to liberal [in MS, where I come from] on social issues. But on language, I am absolutely conservative. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it correct. Of course, it will eventually, which is how our language has always evolved. But not without a fight! I will continue to speak out about such linguistically corrosive things as the dumb-ass apostrophe ["80's," "DVD's"] which is even, to my utter dismay -- about which I've already complained to the medium in question -- used by the New York Times these days. Just because an insistence on proper usage may be Quixotic doesn't make it wrong, not until the very last voice is finally silenced. [Lynne Truss, you go, girl!]
And, by the way, the 21st century began on January 1, 2001, goddammit! |
Edited by - randall on 10/19/2006 02:11:00 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 10/19/2006 : 08:38:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall
But on language, I am absolutely conservative. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it correct. Of course, it will eventually, which is how our language has always evolved. But not without a fight!
Well, I will personally tie your boxing gloves and put the orange in your mouth if you will organize a delegation to march on the White House and tell the Shrub to stop mutilating the perfectly good, decent, honest, clearly pronouncable word 'nuclear'. Not only have many of his accolytes started mis-pronouncing the word in His Aural Image as 'noo-cu-lar' but it even affected puppy-Blair in one press conference, and now [shudder] I have even heard some BBC announcers following suit.
I realize that UK English has some doozy pronunciation anomalies, mostly proper names such as 'Dalziel' being pronounced Dee-el, which has historical roots centuries old when the English language was integrating foreign words - but there's just nothing logical about distorting 'nuclear,' and one silly man is set to alter it. Just because.
I recognize alongside what nuclear can do, the pronunciation of the word ain't so important. But ... see what you can do, Randall!
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 10/19/2006 09:39:19 |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 10/19/2006 : 09:05:36
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| Perhaps it's his new-clear way of speaking. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 10/19/2006 : 09:44:15
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall
And, by the way, the 21st century began on January 1, 2001, goddammit!
Okay, now I'm sure of it. Randall is a GEEK!
(My brother, the self-professed #1 Geek of Evanston, Illinois agrees with you 100%.)
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TitanPa
"Here four more"
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Posted - 10/19/2006 : 14:13:08
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| If you kill 2 birds with one stone, you should be ashamed. What were they doing at the time? The fact that they were so close that you could kill them both should have been a wake up call! |
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Poorly worded idioms
