When examined, or just because it’s weird on its own.
Example: Beat a dead horse
- You whip a horse to go faster
- It dies from being whipped too much
- You still want the horse to go faster
- You continue to whip it
My wife has worked with lots of people who are not native English speakers who are sometimes taken aback by the idioms. One colleague flat out refused to accept that “FOMO” is a word.
I suggested that she is in a position to make some up, like “Let’s not put fish in the milk bucket.” But she didn’t go for it. I guess she’s not an agent of chaos after all :/
“I’m not here to fuck spiders” - said by Australians who want to drop the preamble and get down to business.
And here I was, just assuming that to be true about most people…
How inconsiderate of me.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
- You have a cat.
- You wish to remove its skin.
- You realize there’s more than just one method to accomplish this unusual task.
- You state this proudly as a metaphor for problem-solving flexibility.
Does the pope shit in the woods?
A humerous combo of ‘Do bears shit in the woods?’ and ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ Which are two jokey ways of saying ‘Yeah, obviously, duh’.
My wife used to work in the backcountry. Lots of unpaved remote roads. Bears apparently do not shit in the woods. They shit on the road.
But does the pope shit in the woods?
No, he’s trapped in the pope mobile , that thing isn’t equipped for offroad travel
No, but bears are catholic
