Words and Stuff Johnny Grimond

Somewhere between clichés (overused, fly-blown phrases) and dead metaphors (words so familiar they have become ordinary) lie the idiomatic expressions that do so much to bring language to life.

This, I guess, is true of any tongue. It certainly pleases foreigners learning English to drop an expression like ‘part and parcel’ into the conversation. Similarly, would-be German-speakers may be a little chuffed if they can say, ‘ Er hat einen Vogel,’ meaning ‘He must be crazy’, though the literal translation is ‘He has a bird’. Those learning French may likewise get a soupçon of satisfaction from remarking, ‘ Il y a du monde au balcon,’ which Collins Robert dictionary translates not as ‘There’s quite a crowd on the balcony’ but as ‘What a pair!’

Some English expressions confuse even native speakers. Does ‘a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance’ mean ‘a custom usually disregarded’? That is how it is commonly used, but most authorities say it means a custom – the Danes’ wild drinking habits – that it is more honourable to break than to keep. There’s little doubt that’s what Shakespeare intended when he put the phrase in Hamlet’s mouth.

What about ‘to the manner born’, Hamlet’s preceding words? The long- running sitcom To the Manor Born has made many viewers believe the phrase refers to people born in grand houses. The context in Hamlet – ‘I am native here. And to the manner born’ – makes it pretty clear that Shakespeare meant ‘accustomed from birth’ to Danish revels. Some scholars argue, though, that ‘native’ had a legal meaning of ‘someone born in a manor’; so ‘to the manner born’ was used in a double sense.

Much clearer, you might think, is ‘beg the question’, ie ‘fall into the fallacy of assuming what is to be proved as part of the would-be proof’. That is the longstanding definition. Nowadays, though, it is almost always used to mean ‘raise a question’. A correspondent to the Times wrote in March 2016 that the decision to ask the public to choose a name for Britain’s new polar research ship, leading to overwhelming support for Boaty Mcboatface, ‘begs the question as to whether asking the public to vote on our future in Europe is such a good idea’. So common is the misuse of ‘beg the question’ that its old meaning seems doomed.

Yet idiomatic expressions are often vehicles for keeping old meanings going. How often would we mention ‘winks’, meaning a doze, if they didn’t come as a phrase with ‘forty’ attached? In the singular, ‘wink’ is hardly used except to say, ‘I didn’t sleep a wink’, though occasionally one may be ‘tipped the wink’. ‘Of the first water’ also endures in phrases, though its meaning in the context of assessing diamonds has long since gone. Thus Tuppy Glossop was traduced by Bertie Wooster as a ‘dumb brick of the first water’. More recently, Alexander Mccall Smith has described Terence Moongrove as a ‘mechanical innocent of the first water’.

Old meanings live on in technical, legal and liturgical contexts. We would seldom hear of ‘lading’ were there no ‘bills of lading’. ‘Laden’, yes, and also ‘ladle’, but even ‘laded’ is usually ‘loaded’. ‘Grievous’, too, may crop up, but tends to be followed by ‘bodily harm’.

As for ‘proof’ and ‘proves’, old expressions in which those words are used to mean ‘test’ are widely misunderstood. That doesn’t much matter in ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, but ‘the exception that proves the rule’ doesn’t mean the rule is confirmed by the exception, as is often supposed. Rather, it means that the making of the exception reinforces the existence of the rule.

Still confused? No matter. The meanings survive.