Big Ankles

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tony Pillow.

I am calling from Linden, Wisconsin today.

All right.

Well, what’s on your mind?

I had a question, I guess, as refers to a phrase that I’ve heard, actually a couple of phrases, but I’m really wondering what the underlying meaning is.

The phrase I’m referring to is when you refer to someone or ask someone or tell someone, actually, that they have a large head or a swollen head or they’re getting a big head.

But in addition to that phrase, I have a very close friend of mine who is a French native, and she has a similar term.

She said to me once, you’re getting awful thick ankles or awful large ankles.

So I’m thinking to myself, I’m wondering there’s almost got to be a connection between these two phrases, and neither one of them really makes sense from a vocabulary sense to me, and I was wondering if maybe you could shed some light on what this phrase might refer to.

Okay.

So, Tony, sometimes you’re being told that you have a big head, and sometimes you’re being told that you have swollen ankles?

That is correct, yes.

I have been accused of that.

Did she accuse you in French or in English of having swollen ankles?

It was in English, yes.

When she’s really mad, I don’t understand a word she says. That’s why we get along so well.

Well, let’s take these one at a time.

To have a big head really is kind of just a literal expression to mean that you’re full of yourself.

Your head is swollen because you think that you’re so important.

It’s this whole idea that you have this brain, the seat of your personality and your character and everything that you are is engorged with pride or engorged with, right?

I mean, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here.

Engorged with pride.

No, the idea, I mean, it’s a pretty literal metaphor, idiom.

And you’ll find that we have a number of different expressions in English which say the same thing.

You are too big for your britches.

Or you might say that you’re too big for your boots.

It’s all the same sentiments.

The idea that you believe that you’re beyond the size or the abilities of normal people.

Somehow you’re more important.

You’re larger than them.

And, of course, it works the same way in French.

The French expression is something like avoir les chevilles qui enflans, which is to have ankles that are swollen.

But why ankles?

I think that’s Tony’s question, right?

Well, it’s kind of the same.

Well, it’s an idiom, you know, and I say this again and again.

But idioms, if you start breaking idioms down and look for some kind of truth to them, you’re almost always going to come up defeated because they tend to be opaque.

The idea here is that you’re just big in a place that you shouldn’t be big.

Oh, well, that makes sense.

But these idioms are great.

I mean, you know, all hat and no cattle talking about somebody who’s…

It’s kind of like that, yeah.

You have a swollen head or a swelled head, right?

And the French have the same thing.

They also talk about having a swollen head, avoir la grosse tête or avoir la tête enfle.

It’s the same story here.

They even have the ankle thing is so embedded idiomatically in French that you don’t even have to say the full form of it.

You could just say something like, ça va, l’écheville?

When somebody says something that sounds really self-important, you say, ça va, les sévilles?

Like, how are the ankles going?

You know, how are your ankles doing?

Did she say that to you too?

That one I haven’t heard yet.

What’s really interesting here about all of this is that I don’t think it’s the body part that matters so much.

It’s just the idea that you somehow, some way, you’re puffed up, you know.

Sure.

You’re inflated.

In any case, thanks so much for giving us a call, Tony.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it, guys.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

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