More words to the wise

Assuming, on the basis of her Feb. 28 column, that my esteemed colleague Carolyn Gray Thornton is as fascinated by idiomatic sayings as I am, I can't help urging her to invest in "The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms" and "The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs," both of which were recently offered for sale on remaindered lists for peanuts.

The former tells us that "bought the farm" is a 1950s development of the original "buy it" (to suffer a severe reversal; to die). "Buy it" dates from World War I.

I always assumed "kick the bucket" came from the boxing ring, the equivalent of "throw in the towel" (instead of coming out for the next round) since there's always a bucket on hand in boxing matches. Not so. The American Heritage says, "To die. This moderately impolite usage has a disputed origin. Some say it refers to committing suicide by hanging, as when one stands on a bucket, fastens a rope around one's neck, and kicks the bucket away. A more likely origin is the use of bucket' in the sense of a beam from which something may be suspended; because pigs were suspended by their heels from such beams after being slaughtered." Surprisingly, the term goes back to the 1700s.

Some time back I was wondering about the origin of "The game is not worth the candle." The Wordsworth gives the first usage as 1668; but the American Heritage is more illuminating: "This expression, which began as a translation of a term used by the French essayist Michele de Montaigne in 1580, alludes to gambling by candlelight, which involved the expense of illumination. If the winnings were not sufficient, they did not warrant the expense. Used figuratively, it was a proverb within a century.

Of "bring home the bacon" the AU "Idioms" says "Although the earliest citation for this phrase in the 'Oxford English Dictionary' dates from 1924, the term is widely believed to come from the much older game of catching a greased pig, a popular competition at country fairs in which the winner was awarded the pig." Many, many sayings from frontier days are still with us, perfectly useful and comprehensible even though their original meanings are obscure to most. Three examples that readily come to mind are "go off at half cock," "flash in the pan," and "lock, stock, and barrel." All have to do with the flintlock musket. The AH gives the modern meaning of the first as "to act prematurely," but "originally referring to the slipping of a gun's hammer (cock) so that the gun fires (goes off) prematurely." Of the second, it says, "alludes to the 17th-century flintlock musket, which could be fired only when the flash of the priming powder in the lockpan ignited the charge in the bore. When it failed to ignite, there was a flash in the pan and the gun did not shoot." And of the third, "This expression refers to the three elements of a firearm, the lock, or firing mechanism, the stock, or handle, and the barrel, or tube (early 1800s)." As a comparative Methuselah, I still cling to many earlier usages. I don't say "turn the furnace down," I say "turn down the fire" (or even "pee on the fire!") In the days of coal stoves, a real fire was always there to be seen; and, after all, the furnace does still contain one.

And I never liked the jawbreaker "refrigerator" (or "Frigidaire" as my little friends preferred). To me it's still the "icebox," like the one it replaced in 1940. And for Pete's sake why can't we adopt the sensible British colloquialism "fridge," or even the seagoing "reefer?" As for "the skillet (or more commonly, the pot) calling the kettle black," the All explains, "This expression dates from the days of open-hearth cooking, which blackens practically all the utensils used. [Early 1600s]" A "rolling stone," it tells us, is "a person who moves about a great deal and never settles down. This expression is a shortening of the proverb 'A rolling stone gathers no moss,' first recorded in 1523, which indicates that one who never settles anywhere will not do well. After some 300 years of this interpretation, in the mid-1800s the value of gathering moss (and staying put) began to be questioned, and in current usage the term is most often used without any particular value judgment." So Carolyn correctly intuited the evolved usage.

It would be a dreary world if all such idioms and proverbs were allowed to die out simply because the younger generation doesn't understand their original meaning. It's the solemn duty of older generations to pass them on; and likewise the duty of any young person who wishes to become truly literate to learn and use them.

They're the vocabulary by which we communicate, in a far deeper and more colorful manner than we could without them.

It's in a class with classical mythology, the modern academic neglect of which I've corn-plained before. In a local 1887 newspaper murder story, the reporter referred to "Niobe's tears" and "Lethe's waters." Would a moden reporter, I asked, know the one from the other? The world is a drab, colorless enough place without our losing the beauty and usefulness of such images and usages out of the past.

I asked a teacher, "Do mothers introduce their kids to 'Mother Goose' any more?" She answered, "Mothers don't spend time with their children any more." So I can conclude in my usual curmudgeonly way by apportioning blame to the usual suspects, via the names of two 1920s French books. Modern youthful ignorance of our cultural heritage is due to "La Trahison des Clerks" (the treason of the intellectuals, i.e. the educational establishment) and "La Trahison des Femmes" (the treason of the women).

The educrats are too busy preaching social adjustment, political correctness, and "sex education" to bother with teaching literacy (full mastery of language) or our cultural vocabulary, the idioms and images bequeathed from the classical world and our own long past.

And the mothers are too busy, well, doing whatever they do do these days.