A listener remembers her grandmother’s colorful comment when someone arrived late after getting lost: You went around your elbow to get to your thumb. Lots of similar sayings in English suggest roundabout routes or overcomplicated tasks, including going around your elbow to reach your nose or ear, and other body parts, and going all the way around Robin Hood’s barn. In the UK, you may hear the same idea expressed with going around the Wrekin, a large hill in Shropshire, or going around the houses. The French convey a similar idea with chemin des écoliers, or “the schoolchildren’s path.” A German expression translates as “go from behind through the chest into the eye,” and a similar phrase among Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians roughly translates as “go over a stream for water.” This is part of a complete episode.
When your server brings food to the table and inquires as to who ordered which dish, that’s informally known in the restaurant biz as auctioning. If your meal is delayed because the person who took your order forgot about it, that’s called a...
Candace from Memphis, Tennessee, wonders about the phrase You’re eating me out of house and home. The emphatic doublet house and home is part of a long tradition that includes scared out of house and home and chased out of house and home. Even...
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