The "Vocabulary and Idioms" Game

a reply to: VeeTNA
"Cobble", meaning the cobble-stones laid in the streets, is an independent word, not derived from "cobbler". From "cobbler", we get the cockney rhyming-slang "cobblers" meaning "testicles" and "cobblers!" meaning "that statement is nonsense". During the Brexit crisis last year, a Downing Street spokesman (anonymous, but we can probably guess) called a particular suggestion "a load of cobblers". I suspect that the member who first brought up the word "cobbler" was thinking of that usage.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: VeeTNA
"Cobble", meaning the cobble-stones laid in the streets, is an independent word, not derived from "cobbler". From "cobbler", we get the cockney rhyming-slang "cobblers" meaning "testicles" and "cobblers!" meaning "that statement is nonsense". During the Brexit crisis last year, a Downing Street spokesman (anonymous, but we can probably guess) called a particular suggestion "a load of cobblers". I suspect that the member who first brought up the word "cobbler" was thinking of that usage.

I initially connected cobbler to shoemaker, but I also knew and have used the name to mean "nonsense". Cobbler (pie) as a dessert also comes to mind, especially when I'm hungry.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I defer to you then.

/tips hat politely

I'll have to cut my teeth on another thread...



Respectfully,
~ meathead

a reply to: VictorVonDoom

Perhaps both expressions mean the same thing, just expressed differently: Answer a fool according to his folly meaning either showing him the error of his foolishness but not stooping to it, or, if one does answer a fool according to his folly, one become as as the fool and debased himself to the fool's level. The second, "Do not answer..." meaning don't answer him by stooping to his level, but rather show him the error of his ways. Rise above it.

ETA:

Couple of Links.

1

2

how about "one and the same"

I get distraught when I see people mess that one up with "one in the same".....

also

"tenets" vs "tenants"

2 very, very different things. Why doesn't everyone know this?

a reply to: VeeTNA
Two factors which seem inescapable nowadays;
Sloppy pronunciation, combined with spell-as-you-pronounce.
People not thinking about what they are saying, just repeating parrot-fashion what they think other people have said.

I've noticed "one in the same", and I've noticed how the old "If you think that, you've got another "think" coming" has morphed into the meaningless "you've got another thing coming".
That second one is a symptom of the way modern pronunciation fashion tends to create more words ending with "ng". It's enough to blow a mamg's ming.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Yeah, and it just keeps getting worse. I am retired as of now - and I think I might volunteer as a literacy educator. Was brought up very pendantic - but learned. To this day it drives me nuts. My ex-boss said "weary" instead of "wary." He also refused to read the news. He told me that he hopes I will stop looking at the news. I told him I hope he starts.

Watching Lucy Worsley on BBC "If Walls Could Talk" (heh - there's an idiom right there!)

Anyway, she does the evolution of how our modern "houses" developed from medieval times to modern.

Some of the phrases she has teased out:

Hit the Hay
Make the Bed
and
Curfew

The first two are interesting of course, but I was aware of those traditions that lent rise to them

Next, though, she showed how "Curfew" comes from the days of when people slept communally in great halls and it was time to "cover the fire" (put it out for the night)

Nowadays, a curfew is a regulation requiring people to remain indoors between specified hours, typically at night – for example: a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The word is from Old French and Anglo-Norman forms such as cuevre-feu and covrefeu, hence the Modern French word couvre-feu (plural couvre-feux), composed of:
– couvre, imperative of the verb couvrir, to cover,
– feu, meaning fire.

Huh! Interesting!
Source: more interesting tidbits included!

And here's another one:

Looking down upon

comes from castle living, when the aristocrats can watch out a window on the mobs below, while in their private upstairs suite

'upper crust'

What's its origin as a phrase?

and

'hog wash' ?

Interesting Netflick: The Professor and The Madman.

Sean Penn and Mel Gibson

About language and the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.