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EVERYTHING'S 'COMING UP ROSES' SO FAR IN NEW YEAR
My daughter, a fifth grade teacher in Honduras, has two college degrees in Spanish. One might assume she would have no difficulties communicating on the streets of San Pedro Sula.
Not a valid assumption, she told me while visiting during the holidays. What she wasn't taught in college, she said, were the slang and colloquialisms that spice daily conversation in all languages.
Think about your everyday discussions with your family members and coworkers. How many times each day do we use cliches and phrases that, literally, don't make a lot of sense?
When someone used the phrase "doesn't amount to a hill of beans" the other day in a phone conversation, I made a mental note to do a little follow-up research on gardening cliches.
"Hill of beans," I learned, dates from 1800s America because that's when and where "hill planting" of beans originated.
In 1874, "full of beans" meant arrogant and offensive concerning one's newfound prosperity, while today it generally means either lively and free-spirited, or misinformed.
"To spill the beans" means to give away a secret, and beans in this case refer to information. This phrase has been around since the 1920s.
The expression "like two peas in a pod" refers to two objects closely resembling each other and dates from the sixteenth century, although the similarity of peas in a single pod was observed by the ancients.
"Hard row to hoe" is another American phrase. In 1835, David Crockett is quoted as saying "I never opposed Andrew Jackson for the sake of popularity. I knew it was a hard row to hoe; but I stood up to the rack." Sorry, I don't know what "stood up to the rack" refers to.
Charles Dickens used the phrase "can't get blood from a turnip" in the nineteenth century to express a hopeless source of money.
"Cool as a cucumber" generally means calm and collected and apparently is based on scientific fact. On a warm day, the inside of a field cucumber has been measured as being 20 degrees cooler than the air.
Shakespeare is credited with coining the phrase "in a pickle" to suggest being in a bad situation or in trouble. "How camest thou in this pickle?" says Alonso to his fellow-conspirator in The Tempest, 5:1.
Roses are mentioned in several common cliches. Shakespeare is also credited with coining the phrase "a rose by any other name" in Romeo and Juliet. "What's in a name?" Juliet asks, "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called."
"To come up smelling like roses" means to emerge untarnished from a sordid situation. A Boston Globe columnist wrote in 1990, "It's the second spring of George Bush's 'Don't worry, be happy' presidency, and everything continues to come up roses for the politician who two years ago was a symbol of hopelessness."
"Bed of roses" originally referred to a delightful place, a very pleasant situation, although today it is often used in a negative sense, as in "not a bed of roses." Some rose gardeners would argue that it doesn't make sense anyway, considering all the work involved in growing this plant.
Looking through rose-colored glasses means to view events and people very positively and see only their good points.
"Fresh as a rose" has given way to the more common "fresh as a daisy," which means vigorous, well rested and full of energy. The daisy's name comes from the Old English daeges eage, meaning "day's eye," which refers to the flower's yellow disk. Like many flowers, daisies close their rays in the evening, concealing the disk, and reopen them in the morning. It's possible the simile alludes to this characteristic.
"To gild the lily" is another Shakespeare phrase that means to add excessive ornamentation and to pile excess on excess.
The origin of "to cut the mustard" may have to do with how mustard is prepared. Since vinegar is added to ground-up mustard seed, the vinegar is said to "cut" the bitter taste.
Since it's the start of a new year, I'll end this column by cautioning you not to "sow any wild oats" and to wish for you to be "in clover," i.e., to prosper and to live well.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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