BEES IN BONNETS, FEATHERS IN CAPS
Dressing up words at the drop of a hat
PEDANTS can be wolves in sheep’s clothing. They lie there all meekly and pretend not to be bothered about the misuse and abuse of words, biting their long red tongues with sharp pointy teeth when tempted to attack passers-by who confuse “weary” with “wary”.
Pedants have their limits, however. Tickle a resting pedant’s mutton-chop whiskers with an “inquiry” that should be an “enquiry” and watch how they come apart at the seams. Pedants are cut from the same cloth, and they snap easily.
There are many ways to penetrate a pedant’s disguise. One of these is to put the word “only” in the wrong position in a sentence. Say “I only wear my hat on Sundays” and a pedant will reply: “Oh, you mean you do nothing else on Sundays except wear your hat?”
Say: “I wear only my hat on Sundays” and a pedant will come around to your house to see you naked (or the perverted ones will, anyway).
A pedant will be satisfied only when you say: “I wear my hat only on Sundays.” Assuming that’s what you meant and you are not in the habit of parading around in the emperor’s new clothes and a fedora.
“The emperor’s new clothes” is an elegant way to express the dressing up of an insubstantial theory or concept in fancy words, dazzling the onlooker with bling so that the underlying emptiness goes unnoticed.
Richard Dawkins used this expression as the title of a now-famous essay in which he unmasked the tautologous obfuscating discourse of postmodernity to reveal the naked truth beneath what he called “metatwaddle”.
One could say that Dawkins caught postmodernists with their pants down. Some might have felt that by airing their dirty linen in public he had hit below the belt, but perhaps he made others pull up their pants, roll up their sleeves and stop skirting the issue.
Has anyone noticed how ob- sessed English speakers are with clothing? Dig deep into the laundry basket and you’ll find an idiom for almost every item of apparel. There is a bee for every bonnet and a feather for every cap.
When it comes to the language of clothing, pants in particular can perform multiple functions. Pants can be removed (metaphorically speaking) by being beaten, scared, bored or charmed off their wearer. The person who wears the pants might be nothing but a smarty pants who flies by the seat of his pants, but if he has ants in his pants it’s probably best to let him be.
Shirts are just as useful. You can wear your heart on your sleeve, laugh up your sleeve, have an ace (or a trick) up your sleeve, be hot under the collar, give someone the shirt off your back, lose your shirt or keep your shirt on (the last one is advisable, unless you’re one of those Sunday-best types who forsakes all clothing bar headgear).
I take my hat off to those able to speak off the cuff at the drop of a hat. Others keep their abilities under their hats. And some items of clothing wear more than one hat. Take belts. You can tighten your belt when times are tough or show off about all the achievements you have under your belt. If someone is belting out a song, you can tell them to belt up. Which I will do now, before I start pulling shoes and underwear out of the hat. If anyone can definitively count all the metaphorical ways in which we wear our clothes, however, I’ll eat my hat.
A pedant will come around to your house (or the perverted ones will)