From the Head Down

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who is this?

This is Karen Jensen from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Well, hello, Karen. What’s going on?

What’s going on? I have a question for you.

Okay, please.

I was quoted in the local newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, because I used a phrase, a fish stinks from the head down.

And after that quote aired, our local paper has the ability to make comments on articles.

And some of the comments were very critical that I had said something so unkind, because I was talking about an organizational leader who I felt like was not the right leader for the organization.

And I used that phrase to describe the problems in the organization.

And I was accused of calling the leader a stinky fish, which I didn’t think is what I was doing.

I thought what I was saying was, there’s a problem in the organization, you need to look to the leadership.

Right. That’s how that phrase is understood, right?

Yes. That’s what I thought. But I got a lot of criticism.

And he’s a very nice man, and I like him a lot, and I don’t want to call him a stinky fish, and I want to make sure I don’t use the phrase inappropriately.

So your version of it was a fish stinks from the head down?

Yes.

A slightly more common version is a fish rots from the head down.

Huh.

I think you should go back to that comment section and just type, can you say figure of speech?

I mean, it is a figure of speech.

And Karen, you’re in great company.

I mean, this expression has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

You’ll find variations of it in German, Hungarian, Albanian, Turkish.

I’ve seen it in ancient Greek, in Latin.

And it’s exactly what you’re talking about, that when there’s corruption or decay, it starts from the top.

That’s lovely.

So you hear lots of different versions of it.

I think the question is, does a fish literally rot from the head?

I don’t know.

I don’t know the answer to that.

Do we have someone else we can ask that question of?

I bet we have some people in Alaska that know fish very well.

Maybe they can tell us.

There’s an idea.

Yeah, we have listeners in Alaska, and they’ll let us know, hopefully.

Well, I tell you, this question has troubled language buffs enough that some of them have asked experts in the field.

I remember William Sapphire asked somebody at the Smithsonian Institution about fish and how they rot, and the answer was they probably don’t rot from the head down.

There’s not that much to rot in the head.

It would probably start in the intestines.

It really makes me want to get a fish and lay it outside and see what happens.

A little scientific experiment of my own.

Yeah, Karen, it really makes you want to get a fish and lay it outside and see what happens.

But the original dilemma here is that somebody misunderstood what you had to say.

As Martha has rightly pointed out, they’re wrong to misconstrue that.

It’s not a paddocks.

You don’t call people a fish as an insult usually.

There’s one slang fish that I could think of that might be mildly insulting, and that’s a newbie or a new person at a company or job or on a sports team might be called a fish or in prison might be called a fish.

But that’s clearly not the context here.

And anybody who misunderstood that is going out of their way to misunderstand.

I think you were right to use that expression.

Well, that makes me feel a lot better.

Excellent.

I’m glad to hear that.

It’s sort of like the lipstick on a pig expression, isn’t it?

I mean, nobody’s talking about literal pigs.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I didn’t think it was literal either.

Right.

I wouldn’t have used it.

Well, Karen, we got your back.

And that’s good to know because you guys having my back is what matters.

Oh, rock and roll.

All right.

All right.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Thank you, Karen.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

One thing I should have said to Karen was I know the kind of people that just write comments on the Internet without really thinking about what they’re saying.

Sure.

And they’re not to be taken seriously.

I mean, that’s an overgeneralization, but it’s so easy to leave comments without really contemplating what you’re putting in print, right?

Right, absolutely.

And people tend to willfully misunderstand.

You know, they tend to go out of their way to find anything that you might have said that might possibly be offensive and then make a big deal out of it, rather than being generous and giving you the benefit of the doubt.

If you’ve got a question about language, drop us a line, a hook, and a sinker, and we’ll try to help you out.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I think that was a P-U-N.

And a S-P-I-N-K-Y.