| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
NON-Fiction Book Reviews From our Archives |
March 2006 |
Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins
by Linda & Roger Flavell, Kyle Cathie Limited, paperback, 216 pages, $16.95, ISBN 1-85626-509-9,
distributed through Raincoast Books
The World in a Phrase
- A Brief History of the Aphorism
by James Geary, Bloomsbury, 229 pages, ISBN 1-58234-430-2 (hard), $25.95, distributed through Raincoast Books
Armed Gunmen, True Facts and Other Ridiculous Nonsense
By Alidë Kohlhaas
Oh, where were you, years ago, Dictionary of Idioms? This little, compact volume by Linda and Roger Flavell is a pure gem. It should be on every person's bookshelf. The copy before me is the 2005 paperback version of Dictionary Of Idioms and their Origins, which its authors first published in 1995. That happens to be five years too late for when I searched for just such through bookstores in my immediate surroundings for just such a book because I wanted something that would help me to explain not just the meanings of idioms in the English language, but also their origins. I was in the midst of preparing a booklet for my future students at a college in Northern China. Alas, I had to do without. Consequently, while I could give them the meanings of the idioms that we use, it proved quite difficult for my students to understand that one cannot literally every word spoken in English and that to translate spoken in English into Mandarin, or vice versa, requires an understanding of idioms.
Idioms are very hard to grasp for a non-English speaker. Every language, no doubt, has them, but English appears to be replete with them. What makes it worse is that some people cannot tell the difference between an idiom and a metaphors. Well, the Flavells have found a very good way to explain the difference. They also tell us in a small essay why idioms cannot be changed. We can say, 'to beat about the bush', but it is meaningless to say, 'to hit about the bush.' Why? This little dictionary will give you the answer.
Aside from listing and explaining of hundreds of idioms we use daily, the book also contains a large number of essays. One speaks about how Shakespeare and the Bible influenced our speech quite subconsciously, another about the way we treated animals in the past and how that had an impact on our speech. Past superstitions also influenced our ancestors and through them, the creation of a large number of idioms. There are 22 of these brief essays in the dictionary. They are quite illuminating.
Just one warning. Because the Flavells are British, they use British spellings in this book. So, for North Americans: don't look for 'an ax to grind'. Look for 'n axe to grind', to give just a minor example. There is also the explanation for one idiom with which I can't quite agree as having the Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook as the originator. Oh, that's an awful sentence. But, as it may, 'backroom boys', I believe, has its origins in the political system of the USA, namely the backroom men at Tammany Hall in New York. That would predate Beaverbrook's remark from March 24, 1941 in which his refers to the "boys in the backroom . . ." to whom the credit of much of the war effort must be given. He, no doubt, being Canadian and being Max Aitken long before being Lord Beaverbrook, would have heard the use of 'backroom men', usually in the negative, and reworded this phrase to its more positive meaning, which ended up as 'backroom boys'. Though here, even now, this phrase has something negative about it. Still, that is just something to quibble about, but not to be taken too seriously. The Flavells have done their homework extremely well, and given us a very informative book on idioms.
Linda and Roger Flavell have studied the origins of words for more than 25 years. Roger Flavell's Master's thesis was on the nature of idiomaticity and his doctoral research on idioms and their teaching in several European languages. Linda Flavell is a former English teacher who has written study books for overseas students, not unlike the one I prepared for my Chinese students. Their joint projects include 'Dictionary of Word Origins', 'Dictionary of Proverbs & Their Origins' and 'Dictionary of English Down the Ages'. All of these books are published by Kyle Cathie and I, for one, would love to have them in my collection. Roger Flavell currently works at the University of London Institute of Education.
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January 2006
There are few of us who do not now and then quote an aphorism, although we may not necessarily know who wrote it and when. James Geary, the Europe editor for Time magazine is an avowed aphorism collector, many of which have guided his life's path. A college student experiment with aphorisms actually led to him meeting his wife. Now he has given us The World in a Phrase, A Brief History of The Aphorism.
A slim volume in the number of pages, it is, nevertheless, a book of large proportions. His first chapter speaks so enthusiastically of the aphorism and contains such wisdom, one has no other option but to continue to read the book.
In this chapter he quotes one guiding aphorism that we should all keep in mind. Geary tells us it leads him to vary even his daily route to work from London's Underground to the Time office. Its original source is a former Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, Gerald Burrill:
The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
It is a reminder that we can be caught up so much in routine that we fail to see things in new perspectives and so miss what life is all about. "Fresh perspectives can squeeze through even the slightest breaks in routine," Geary tells us in the first chapter of the book, which he calls "The Confessions of an Aphorism Addict".
During the past few decades that have made us aware of the need to live well through a good diet, we have all become familiar with the aphorism, "we are what we eat". I don't know who first quoted it, but it is a takeoff of one of Buddha's aphorisms, "We are what we think," which Geary uses as the heading of his second chapter. In it he discusses the ancient wisdoms come down to us from many millennia before and after Christ's time, ending with the Zen masters.
He leads us through history in eight chapters. The final chapter he titles "In the Beginning Was the Word— At the End just the Cliché: The Aphorism Today". This chapter brings us the thoughts of mostly those practicing this literary art form in the 20th century and beyond.
From Geary's musings we learn what the Greek and Roman Stoics, the French and Spanish Moralists, the German cynics, and many more have to tell us through the precise, brief and definitive imagery of the aphorism. One can't agree with ever sage's view of life or the world, but one can, nevertheless, learn from each one quoted in Geary's book. Sometimes these aphorisms shock, sometimes they arouse recognition, but always they make us sit up and think about what they have to tell us in a brief mental and verbal journey. It is a journey worth taking, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
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While James Geary is fascinated by aphorisms, Richard Kallan is captivated by tautologies, namely the redundancy in frequently used phrases in which the modifier of a word repeats its meaning. He named his book Armed Gunmen, True Facts and other Ridiculous Nonsense. I think the title tells us all.
It is a hilarious read that touches on our strange habit of repeating ourselves with unnecessary words or descriptions. Think of the now so commonly known advertising slogan: "Free Gift." It grates on me every time I hear it. It is as if someone uses a dull nail to scratch a slate blackboard; you know the old-fashioned kind found in one roomed schoolhouses. Or think of that other hideous phrase first coined by Richard Nixon, "in this period of time," which no one seems to be able to do without these days when establishing a specific moment of something occurring. "Point in time' is a variation on that theme.
Kallan has a Ph.D, in communication studies. He is chairman of the Department of Communication at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and lives in Santa Barbara. Among his many publications he co-authored How to Take the Fog out of Business Writing. In Armed Gunmen he entertains us royally with our follies in everyday speech. I just couldn't help chuckling, even laughing out loud now and then while reading through his compendium of some of the excessive verbiage we carry around and disseminate quite accidentally, and sometimes with seeming intend to impress others with our verbal acrobatics.
After reading "Armed Gunmen", I am sure, we have no choice but to clean up our language, and trim it down to its correct meaning without the confusing repetition. Let's remember that the day we meet an unarmed gunman, we'll be able to prevent him from robbing us without coming to any harm. And let' s also remember that the day we come across an untrue fact, we'll be able to hit the headlines with our discovery.
You will also like the illustrations that Kallan chose for his book. They are all by George Cruikshank, who illustrated Charles Dickens' novels, and many other stories in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and books during 70 years of creativity.
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