nancy friedman has a really nice post about some of those phrases that enter everyday language slightly mysteriously - all of a sudden eveyone's using them and you kind of know what they mean but you don't really know where they come from. Drink the Kool-Aid, for instance. Or push the envelope., or think outside the box.
She also challenges the recent use of "sea change" (which I think everyone knows comes from Shakespeare) - a sea change is, of course, a dramatic change, and I've known this phrase in usage all my life. Nancy says people are using it now to indicate a small and not very sginifcant change, whereas anyone who knows their Shakepeare knows a sea change is on the scale of a Tsunami. I think we do still use it in the UK to mean a big change, don't we? (or have I missed something?) Maybe living on a small island affects the way you use sea metaphors.
Anyway. If you like etymology, language and the like, go read.
Hi Maggi, Ive read your blog for a while now but neever (that I can remember) commented on it, (hence the formal entrance) just to help clarify the "drink the kool aid" phrase is a reference to the Jonestown Cult Suicide thing in the 70's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown), but while I was looking up the link for that, I also found out its linked to some sort of LSD Experiment, so there you go, learn something new everyday! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool_aid#.22Drinking_the_Kool-Aid.22
Posted by: Liam | 07/03/2007 at 11:28
Quite! It is not just metaphors. I have banned the word 'absolutely'. It is used to mean 'Yes', 'I agree', 'Completely', 'I understand', and more. Listen and you will hear it used often and wrongly. A believer could not use 'Absolutely'?
Posted by: Simon | 07/03/2007 at 16:32
Thinking outside the box appears to originate here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_the_box
Posted by: dave paisley | 07/03/2007 at 18:56
fun post :) thanks
Posted by: Lorna | 10/03/2007 at 07:00