Meet Bernadette! Readers can get to know the woman behind the Watch Your Language! column when Bernadette Kinlaw visits Little Rock on Sunday, March 1. Drop in to meet her from 2-4 p.m. at the Terry Library, 2015 Napa Valley Drive in Little Rock.
BUT FIRST, TODAY'S COLUMN:
If a friend said he had my six, I might wonder where my six was. It turns out the phrase comes from the military. It's just one of many phrases borrowed and sometimes altered a bit for everyday use.
When I'm moving forward, the direction I'm heading is considered to be the 12 o'clock position on a clock. So the back of me is my six. My fellow soldiers would watch my back to make sure no one was coming after me.
One of the many euphemisms for dying is "bought the farm."
It comes from Air Force pilots in the military. I didn't expect that. A few theories exist on the origin of the phrase. One is that the pilots would talk about getting out of the military and buying a farm where a pilot and his family could finish out their days. If he died in a duty-related crash, fellow service members would say something like, "He bought the farm early." This doesn't sound a bit comforting to me. One odd origin theory is that the farmer who owned the land where the crash occurred would sue the government and get enough money to pay off the mortgage. That is strange.
I've always thought that a "basket case" was a person who suffered a mental breakdown and needed help to make it through the day. The origin of that phrase is pretty gruesome. It describes soldiers who have lost their arms and legs, and so must be carried to get around.
I don't think that phrase is used in that context anymore. One opinion piece in The Washington Post included this line:
"Even if climate change did not exist, India would still be an environmental basket case."
To "bite the bullet" today means to show bravery in a difficult situation.
Its use has expanded to move quite far from any real courage. A food writer in The Washington Post wrote, "I want to implore every home baker to bite the bullet and buy a kitchen scale." It probably doesn't take too much to endure that.
It originated from soldiers who were being disciplined. Those who wanted to be judged as honorable didn't want to cry out as they were being whipped, so they chewed on a bullet. I'm surprised something better wasn't around.
"Collateral damage" is when unintentional damage occurs in war. This includes when civilians are killed during a military operation. Of course, it's still damage, so it's at least as bad as what was intended.
Again, the usage has spread to nonwar conversations. In an article about the danger of fireworks, the writer said, "Consider the collateral damage of humankind's fascination with these over-the-counter explosives."
Robert N. Scola Jr., a cancer survivor, said, "It is undisputed among legitimate medical experts that proton radiation therapy is not experimental and causes much less collateral damage than traditional radiation."
The "cut of one's jib" is how one looks or presents oneself. The original jib is a sail on a ship. In the time of sailing military ships, every nation's navy displayed a different sail. So knowing the nationality of the ship might well temper one's opinion of that ship. Such judgment moved away from ships and on to how one viewed another person.
"Keep your powder dry" is similar to the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. British military man Oliver Cromwell is credited with offering practical advice to his soldiers: "Put your trust in God, my boys, but mind to keep your powder dry." Why? Because wet gunpowder isn't all that effective.
A "loose cannon" most definitely sounds like a bad thing. It's even worse than a bull in a china shop. (What bull uses china?) A loose cannon can create dangerous situations. Older naval ships used cannons to ward off enemies. The cannon would be mounted on wheels to move around the ship. But they'd be tied down in the hopes they wouldn't get loose. It's possible that the cannons loosened more often in literary works than on true seagoing vessels. But the metaphor stuck.
I thought a "security blanket" was the thing Linus carried in the Peanuts comic strip. In a way, the military borrowed the term, and then the term went back to having a nonmilitary meaning. About a generation before World War II, parents clipped blankets to baby cribs to stop the babies from toppling out. During WWII, the figurative security blanket was the measures taken to protect the Allied strategy from getting into the hands of the enemy. And the security blankets today are simply those things that make us feel safe.
A "blockbuster" these days is an extremely popular film. These days, most Marvel films are blockbusters. Also, in days of old, Blockbuster was a store where people could rent videos.
It turns out that a blockbuster is also a bomb so huge that it could destroy a whole city block. In the military, it pretty much was what it says it was.
TOO MUCH BOASTING
My pet peeve of late is: "The house boasted a bow window."
I have never once heard a house or any other inanimate object boast. People boast.
Sources include Business Insider, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Phrase Finder, The Washington Post, Merriam-Webster, Reader's Digest. Reach Bernadette at
bkwordmonger@gmail.com
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