Watch the birdie
WHEN I get around to making New Year’s resolutions, one of them is going to be to cultivate a new air of calm in the face of rampant word abuse. I will no longer throw down menus (or stomp on menu’s) that say pizza’s instead of pizzas. Misplaced apostrophes will simply wash over me (one could say like water off a duck’s back, except ducks do in fact get wet so that would be nonsensical). I will stop beating my head against the wall when people “reach out” instead of calling. I shall ignore groundbreaking jargon and be, like, immune to manifold slang.
Who am I kidding? I’m never going to make those resolutions. I considered it during a long road trip back from the coast, because the sky was a peaceful blue and there wasn’t much to do except count crows. Then I got home to an invasion of ants and all tranquil illusions of giving up pedantry evaporated.
My neighbour tells me the ants haven’t moved in, they are simply on a road trip and my flat happens to be in their way, so instead of going around it they go through it. Ants, apparently, can only think in straight lines.
Crows, on the other hand, never seem to approach their destination directly. Judging by their zigging and zagging and stopping on every telephone pole to think, the ones I observed through the car window didn’t seem to know where they were going.
If you want to describe the shortest route to any point it would make ever so much more sense to say “as the ant marches” than “as the crow flies”. I was pleased to find that the authors of Phrasefinder.org agree with me about the feckless flight of crows. “Crows normally fly in large wheeling arcs, looking for food,” reads the entry.
Thoughts of wet ducks and lost crows made me consider other questionable sayings involving birds. The bluebird of happiness comes from a 1909 play called l’Oiseau Bleu ( The Blue Bird) by Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. I’ve not read or seen this drama so I can’t tell you why the bird was so cheerful, but I’m sure he had a good reason.
Less comprehensible is the early bird. He might be first on the scene when the worm trundles into the conference centre, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he gets it. Another bird might arrive later, fresh from a good night’s sleep, and deftly snatch the worm from the yawning beak of the bird who has been awake for hours.
Another bird-brained phrase tossed thoughtlessly around is “That’s for the birds”. Why should birds be the luckless recipients of things we consider worthless? If an object or an act is so repulsive, why not consign it to the flies, the maggots, or Justin Bieber?
As for that bird in the hand, if it is a fat peacock and you have a crowd to feed, then it may well be worth two scrawny quail in the bush. The captive peacock is unlikely to feel the same way, however. Nor, I imagine, do some in the US like the idea of yet another Bush getting twice as many votes as his opponents. And what about inflation? The bird in the hand originally referred to a hawk or falcon trained to swoop on juicy sparrows cowering in the shrubbery, but hardly anyone has time for falconry these days. Surely a bird in the hand should now be worth at least a flock of phoenixes, or a phalanx of Gripens? Oh hang on, that’s a bird in the arms deal.
There. I feel calmer already. Perhaps I will make those resolutions after all. LS