New Game!

U.S. Coast Guard Day
Birthday - Louis Armstrong (musician)
Colorado Day (Colorado)
Independence Day (Jamaica)
Youth Day (Zambia)

 

Remember the other day when I was talking about silly euphemisms? Well, the media is only the tip of the iceberg.  In the comments, chairman_wowmanaged to one-up me with news of the silliest euphemism ever:

 

Wow, I have never heard euphemisms that bad, and I thought it was bad that some random much-mocked council over here decided that "brainstorm" offended the mentally unstable and that they were going to call them "mind-showers" from now on. Trufax.

 

…

 

That …

 

That looks like fun!

 

Honestly, I would have never thought of it, but hey! It takes a special kind of genius to find the hidden offenses in random benign idioms, to take the actually honorable idea behind political correctness* and make it such a joke. Usually minds like these are found on standardized test committees, who take out references to race in passages from Huckleberry Finn or—my favorite—turn down a passage about mountain climbing because it might make kids who live in flat states sad. And now I’m starting to wonder: what other possible slanders hide in the seemingly innocuous metaphors we all use all the time.

 

So! I propose we find out. I have here the Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms,** a deceptively harmless little volume that I suspect houses some Dark Secrets.  Let’s flip around and see what we find!

 

“rock the boat” – As someone who doesn’t go boating very much, I feel that my demographic is not taken into account with this phrase. I much prefer it when people say “rock the vehicle,” so that I don’t feel like I’m missing out becaues I do not ride in boats.

 

“one-track mind” – Hmm, yes.  This could offend ADD people, you know.  How about “insistent thoughts”?

 

“down to Earth” – Unfair to astronauts, pilots, and aliens, who are not on Earth and yet are still thinking clearly. Maybe we should just say “thinking clearly” and skip the potential for disaster that is this phrase.

 

“get into the swing” – What about motion sick people, I ask you?  Perhaps “get into the rhythm”? But what about people who can’t dance?

 

“on top of the world” – People in the Southern Hemisphere may take exception to this—not to mention those pesky scientists who know the world is ROUND and thus doesn’t technically have a top.  Let’s replace all instances of this with “at some nice point on the world.”

 

And that’s not all! You guys can join me in this.  There’s plenty more idioms where those came from, and I’m sure you could think of a few on your own.  Join me, friends, and together we wil purge any possibility of offending anyone, ever, with old expressions!

 

Here are a few to start y’all off:
“face the music”

“more than meets the eye”

“come apart at the seams”

“open a can of worms.”

“take the cake”***

 

Good luck!

 

 

*Don’t carry on about how the whole idea of political correctness is stupid. It’s actually a rather nice basic concept: hey, guys, let’s try to be respectful to people we haven’t respected in the past!  However, the execution of the concept fails miserably, because 1) all the changed language in the world won’t stick until you change attitudes, and 2) it gets overdone and pathetic, like the above comment, and devalues the concepts that actually could use some respect.

 

**Bought at a book fair nigh ten years ago because I thought it’d be a good way to get ideas for conlang expressions. I would read it to spark some mind showers.

 

***And that’s terrible.