Has anyone ever said something like this to you? “You know, English is a very difficult language.”
We’ve all heard that. My usual response is, “Dude, you were born here. We went to grade school together. Seriously? You spend one semester abroad and now you’re struggling?”
To be fair, we do like to increase the difficulty level more than other languages do. One of the ways that we do this is with figures of speech. I’ll leave grammar instruction to the experts, but I thought that I would put together a guide that would help explain the origin and meaning of some commonly used figures of speech. I’m here to help.
- Hold Your Horses– This saying can be traced back to the old west and specifically a cowboy named Jerry. Jerry owned two horses that were extremely emotionally needy. He was always leaving card games at the local saloon early to go tend to his animals. After a while Jerry’s buddies grew tired of this. Whenever Jerry bailed early, his friends said, “Whatever man, do what you have to do, go hold your horses.” Now you know. The next time you are at a party and that guy who is always the first to leave goes to get his coat, just smirk and say, “Go hold your horses man.”
- Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch– We have plenty of figures of speech about chickens for some reason. This one comes from the days when most everyone owned chickens. If you lived in a neighborhood, it was good advice to not count your eggs early. You didn’t do this because some were likely to get stolen. It was a way of avoiding aggravation. If on Monday you had 13 eggs, and on Wednesday you ended up with 11 chickens, it was better not knowing that your neighbor stole 2 eggs. If you realized that he was stealing eggs, then you were likely to engage in another American tradition. The Feud. Your respective families would war until they lost track of why, and then there would be some kind of unapproved tragic love affair between your descendants. All of this was avoided by the willful ignorance of not counting chickens. In modern times the phrase is used this way. Neighbor: “I’m expecting four packages today, can you keep and eye out for them?” You: “Tony, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
- Go The Extra Mile– This phrase comes from the time when automobiles were becoming very popular. People were driving everywhere, venturing further and further away from their homes. Since people were now venturing into unfamiliar territory, they were always getting lost. Husbands were driving and wives were in the passenger seat going, “Frank. Frank. Frank. Are you listening to me? You don’t know where we are, do you? I told you we should have stopped to ask directions, but nooooo, you wanted to go the extra mile.”
- A Fox In The Henhouse– Another chicken metaphor. The exact place of origin for this one is unknown. The meaning, however, is fairly obvious. It refers to a lady that you find particularly attractive that lives in a house with a number of other ladies that you you don’t find all that attractive. Example: “Hey dude, have you met Julie and her sisters. She’s the fox in that henhouse, huh.”
LINKS
- On this day in 1985 Sir Clive Sinclair debuted the Sinclair C5. It was a personal, electric vehicle. Here’s the commercial.
- Some shipwrecks from the the Great Whaling Disaster of 1871 were just found off of the coast of Alaska.
- The drug lord, El Chapo, was just recaptured, but not before he was interviewed by everyones favorite nutty actor, Sean Penn.
- Panasonic has just introduced a TV that has a “transparent” mode.
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