Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Mixed Metaphors and other stupid quotations

Here it is....the entire kettle of fish in a nutshell for ya...Oh...wait...I mean.....Errrrr.

Have you ever noticed that when purportedly intelligent folks either make serious grammatical errors in an e-mail with a "there, their, or they're"? I've noticed these same folks dole out the always popular mixed metaphors as of late. It's my humble opinion that people with degrees shouldn't be doing this.

*Quick refresher: A mixed metaphor is a combination of figures of speech that creates an incongruous or absurd image: "He's out of the frying pan and into hot water." "The sacred cows have come home to roost." "His victory is a springboard to rekindle his campaign." As these examples demonstrate, the colliding tropes are often idiomatic expressions or cliches.

A few shining examples:

"Don't burn your bridges till you come to them"

"Ya'all gotta take that like a grain of sand". Huh?

"We operate close to the bone by the skin of our teeth."

Do you have any examples?

I hope this doesn't add too much fuel to the oven and drop the Thanksgiving turkey and that you appreciate the inane humor life offers you at times.

1 comment:

  1. LOL! Ya Rob, like how about, "don't put all yer eggs in one steel box" or "Never look a gift horse in the face"? :-) lb

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