WHAT THE IDIOM??

by Tom Shafer

April 1, 2018

So recently I heard the same idiom used three times in one day, and I remembered the old adage “three idioms a day keep the idiots at bay.”  Okay, so perhaps I just made that up – but I contend that might be true about idioms in general.  For the uninitiated (and in particular our English-as-a-second-language learners), Merriam Webster dictionary defines an idiom as “an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but that has a separate meaning of its own.”  In other other words, when you hear that it’s “raining cats and dogs,” “raining,” “cats,” and “dogs” all have their own separate definitions, but collectively they have just one – “it’s raining so hard that even cats and dogs won’t go outside.”  Perhaps I made all of that more confusing, so imagine the poor person just learning our language trying to figure out how to drive to work with all of those cats and dogs falling from the sky.

I mean, think about it: some of our idioms actually make perfect sense.  When someone tells you that “you’ve bitten off more than you can chew,” it’s somewhat easy to understand both as a food thing (“hey, you’ve got half a side of beef hanging out of your mouth!”) and about life in general (“maybe you shouldn’t try to be a golfer, hotel owner, real estate developer, and the President all at the same time!  No, really”).  Or if you are “better late than never,” you’ve finally gotten to your birthday party – one hour late! – but in life, you’ve finally accepted, perhaps grudgingly, that Tom Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time (that does hurt more than I thought it would).  And obviously “you can’t judge a book by its cover” because some really crappy books have spectacular covers – and who would ever read any of our simply-covered classic novels?  This certainly works with human beings as well (SEE: any of the Kardashians, then Mother Teresa).

And some idioms are frankly delicious.  When one of my students would tell me that the homework I had assigned was “a piece of cake,” I would be equally disappointed (I probably wanted it to be more difficult) and surprisingly hungry (“hmmmmmmm, cake!!!”).

But many of our idioms make no sense at all.  When actors tell other actors “to break a leg” before a performance, are they really wishing them good luck, or secretly hoping that a leg is severely broken (“I’m sorry to see that femur protruding through your skin, Mr. Hanks.  Fortunately, I have been memorizing your lines and am prepared to take over for you”).  Or when your aunt says to you, “Oh, you are cuter than a bug’s ear.”  I mean, really, my vision (with contacts) is very good, but unless these bugs are nearly human size like Hercules beetles (okay, they’re not necessarily human size, but Google them if you dare!), there is no way that I could even see their ears, let alone determine their ears’ cuteness factor.  And what about the ubiquitous “I know this like the back of my hand”?  I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I would know the back of my hand from a bigfoot’s – except any bigfoot’s knuckles would be more attractive than mine.

When you boil it down and really think about it, our language is pretty ridiculous.  Even the phrase “pretty ridiculous” is silly (“my ridiculous is so very pretty, isn’t it!”) – and this is coming from a guy noted for his ability to string impressive words together.  So, the next time one of your friends exclaims, “Speak of the devil!” as you approach them or tells you not to “beat around the bush” with some low-down about your co-workers, scream, “WHAT THE IDIOM?!  Speak English, why don’t you?!!”  But then you’ll realize they already are.  WTI??????? (BTW, the I is for idiom!)