Did you know that the phrase is toe the line, and not tow the line? It’s a very common mistake, largely because to toe isn’t commonly used a verb in English, whereas to tow can be found more frequently. Plus, you can tow a line, but what does toeing a line even mean? Continue reading
The stars have always been important to us. When our first ancestors first noticed that those strange lights in the sky moved gradually over time, they tried to find explanations for this phenomenon. Perhaps these movements were linked to seasonal changes, and unpredictable, calamitous events. Perhaps they were gods, or great creatures like bears and crabs, manipulating events here on Earth. Continue reading
I hope you appreciate how lucky you are to be right-handed. Of course you might actually be left-handed, in which case my apologies for the assumption, but statistically you’re probably right-handed. You’re also probably right-footed (90% of right-handers are also right-footed, and about 50% of left-footers). You might not have been aware that footedness is a thing. If sports involving kicking balls don’t occupy a position of any importance in your life, the concept may not have occurred to you. If you’re not sure which is your dominant foot, go kick the nearest person in the shin with each foot (not simultaneously, you don’t want to get hurt) and see which one hurts them more.
I’m entirely lopsided: both left-handed and left-footed. I was quite proud of this when I was a child. I felt it made me stand out. As a football fan, I was impressed by how left-footed players like Ryan Giggs always seemed to be so quick and dynamic and creative. My footballing career did not quite follow his trajectory, mind you. But mostly I just liked being different from everyone else. And I still do. But as I got older, I began to realise that it wasn’t so easy being left-handed… Continue reading
Why do have such reverence for the heart? Yes, it’s functioning is necessary for survival, but that’s true for our other organs too. At the end of the day, it’s a big fleshy pump that sends blood around the body (I think that’s how it’s described in Gray’s Anatomy).
It’s important, but the number of idioms we have that refer to it seem quite out of proportion, compared to how often we refer to other parts of the body. The following is just a small fraction of the heart-related idioms listed at thefreedictionary.com: Continue reading
I’m a bit busy again today, so just popping my head in!
Quick is an interesting word: its most obvious meaning is fast, but some may not be aware that it also used to mean alive. When one considers that it came from the old English cwic, meaning alert or animated, one can see how it could branch out from there to mean either fast or alive.
One of the most common phrases that still uses the old meaning of the word is the quick and the dead. It originally comes from the Bible: Continue reading
I’ve written before about how we use words and phrases associated with temperature, and specifically heat, in the English language. Today, I was struck by the word cool, and how it seems to contradict, yet also agree with, some of these words and phrases.
If we consider that we often associate heat with excessive passion and anger, coolness makes sense, describing someone who doesn’t get angry or overly excited easily; who keeps calm and doesn’t get stressed or worried.
And yet, it’s a short step from there to being cold: unfriendly, uncaring and unkind. Things get very confusing when we start talking about blood. Being hot-blooded means getting angry and excited very quickly, and in contrast, a cold-blooded individual is cruel, emotionless, pitiless. They’re at opposite ends of a spectrum, and equally undesirable because of it. One can be harmful to themselves and others by being too quick to anger. On the other hand, one can be so devoid of feeling for other people that they’re willing to do any number of harmful things to them, or fail to intervene, simply because the plight of others stirs no emotion in them. Continue reading
This was the view from my bus seat at about 7pm last night, somewhere in the midlands of Ireland. It’s not an uncommon sight in Ireland, especially here in the west. What’s always seemed strange to me is that we appear to be surprised when it rains here, even though it happens most of the year round (and I include myself in that we). Any morning when I wake up and see it’s raining I’m disappointed, even if it’s been raining for five or six days in a row. Maybe it’s that morning optimism that makes me hope it might be nice!
Regardless of whether we’re surprised or not, we do like to talk about the weather, but I suppose that’s pretty universal. It’s a useful topic for small talk with someone we don’t know: it’s never controversial and it’s easy to talk about. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 