Visualizing scenes thru idioms

By Herbert Vego

A seminar for student journalists saw me speaking on the topic, “Why Use English Idioms?”

I began by drawing on the blackboard a hammer hitting the nail on the head.

“You see,” I told the class, “when you hit the hammer on the head but do not mean it literally, it means you say or do something that is exactly right.”

An idiom is a group of words in current usage having a meaning that is not deducible from those of the individual words. “To rain cats and dogs,” for example, is now a common substitute for “to rain very heavily”.

As a columnist, I often use idioms as to transmit “visual” thoughts to readers.

There are uncommon idioms, however, that should be written or said sparingly, and only when the context of the sentence would reveal its real meaning!

When a husband recalls his feeling on discovering his wife pregnant for the first time in many years, he may say, “I was over the moon when I found that out.”

The late Palanca awardee and English professor Dr. Leoncio Deriada once briefed me on two features that identify an idiom: First, we cannot deduce the meaning of the idiom from the individual words; and second, both the grammar and the vocabulary of the idiom are fixed, and if we change them we lose its intended meaning. Thus the “pull your socks up” always means “improve the way you are behaving,” unless it refers to its literal meaning.

Many idioms originated as quotations from well-known writers, such as English playwright William Shakespeare, whose “at one fell swoop” came from his play Macbeth, and “cold comfort” from King John. Sometimes, though, idioms evolve and no longer synchronize with their original meanings.

In the Philippine setting, a “yellow” vlogger or blogger may refer to an enabler of the political opposition.

But the idiom “yellow journalism” actually originated from – and remains used in – American English to signify journalism based on sensationalism and crude exaggeration.

Another one, “come hell or high water,” also of American origin, was first printed in an Iowa newspaper in 1882 in reference to cattle herders who traveled from Texas to the Midwest, forging deep rivers and crossing large prairies in the summer heat.

Today, when we say “come hell or high water”, we are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome difficulty or obstacles. For example, a boxer may say of his upcoming fight, “I’m going to win, come hell or high water!”

Other idioms may be used in a slightly different form in different varieties of English. Thus, the idiom “a drop in the ocean” in British and Australian English becomes “a drop in the bucket” in American English.

English, one of the most vivid languages in the world, is made up of over 1.5 million words. Over and above that, the same word can have a variety of meanings depending on the context it is put in; two or more words can have the exact same spelling but are pronounced differently, depending on their meanings.

Thus, “Filipino time” may be badly interpreted as showing up late or behind schedule.

Another important feature to point out is that while people cannot just decide to make up their own, idioms progress from a phrase already common to a certain community. It is typically figurative and usually is not understandable based solely on the words within the phrase.

“The ship plowed” means nonsense. But “the ship plowed the ocean” evokes the image of the ship sailing against the giant waves.

Finding the origins of these idioms has been a herculean task among linguists. To recall two of them:

To “beat around the bush” is thought to have originated in response to game hunting in Britain, where participants would literally beat bushes in order to draw out and capture the birds.

To “spill the beans” is to leak a secret, most likely derived from an ancient Greek voting process, when someone would reveal the result of an election before its intended schedule.

“Smartmagic” has turned into a local lingo for deceit involving alteration of election returns.

-oOo-

MORE POWER ‘INVADES’ ILOCOS NORTE

CORPORATE Social Responsibility transcends territory.

A team of electricians and linemen from MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) – the power distribution utility in Iloilo city – had gone to Ilocos Norte to help and assist in the rehabilitation of localities damaged by typhoon Egay.

MORE Power President Roel Z. Castro confirmed it to this writer in a Viber message.

A power blackout hit the towns of Pasuquin, Burgos, Bangui, Pagudpud, and Adams due to a pilling crane that was toppled at the Baldi Bridge in Pasuquin and led to the crash of the 69-kilovolt power transmission line.

The MORE Power team joined Meralco engineers and linemen in restoring power and conducting clearing operations in the province.

They also conducted relief operations in areas severely affected by the bad weather.