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WALK A THIN LINE

Origin: An alternative expression is ‘Walk a fine line’. Both idioms come from walking on a tightrope which is a circus act where a rope is strung high above the ground and an acrobat has to walk from one to the other without losing his or her balance and falling down and injuring him or herself. This person is called a tightrope walker. Idiomatically it is a metaphor, because we are sometimes in situations where we have to balance what we say to competing groups and if we say the wrong thing we could get hurt.

Usage: Informal or formal, spoken or written, general American and British English

Idiomatic Meaning:  To balance two competing ideas or groups. If you have to walk a thin line, you have to be very careful not to annoy or anger people or groups that are disagreeing or fighting otherwise you will be in trouble.

Literal Meaning:  The literal meaning could be either to walk on a thin line that’s on a sidewalk or perhaps on a tightrope. However, it could mean to walk and lead a thin line the way one walks and leads a dog or cat.

 Why is this funny?  This is a very funny cartoon because it uses the expression walk a thin line in a highly unusual, but correct way. A guy is talking to a dog owner and a cat owner. There is an expression that a dog is man’s best friend. But this is not politically correct because it ignores women and cats as pets. So the guy is walking a thin line trying to be fair to both groups. At the same time, he has a THIN LINE tied to his leash. A leash is usually used for walking pets, but in this case the guy’s pet appears to be a Thin Line and he is walking with it.

Sample sentence:  The diplomat knew she had to walk a thin line between the rebel leaders and the government representatives.

Hint:   Balancing opposites

HEART TO HEART TALK

Origin: Heart to Heart can be both a noun and an adjectival phrase. It refers to a connection - one heart to another heart. The traditional view of love in the West is represented by the heart. It’s also associated with feelings and emotions. It means to talk about things that are not sensible to talk about in public, just one to one. If someone close to you says it, it can mean they need to clear something up, or just check that you are ok about something. Heart itself is a very old word. It was already in Old English and it roots were Germanic and Gothic. The spelling with “ea” dates from 1500. The associations with love and feelings have always been a part of the meaning.

Usage: Informal or formal, spoken or written, general American and British English

Idiomatic Meaning: An intimate, honest conversation or discussion

Literal Meaning:  Accepting that hearts have the power of speech, the drawing shows two hearts having an honest conversation.

 Why is this funny?  This is a pretty complex drawing. There are two hearts, one looks like a real heart; the other looks like a valentine heart, the way hearts are represented on Valentine’s Day cards. This is a holiday which celebrates love, of which the heart is a symbol. It appears that the actual heart was jealous of all the attention the symbolic heart gets. The real heart had told the other one that it’s only a metaphor, a symbol and not the real thing.  But being a heart, its sensitive to the feelings of the other heart., and therefore, is apologizing. So the two hearts are having a real heart to heart chat or talk.

Sample sentence:  After my daughter’s divorce, I took her aside for a heart to heart talk

CHEW THE FAT

Origin: Although some sources attribute the phrase “chew the fat” to sailors, who during a period of resting and conversing, or while working together, would chew on salt-hardened fat, there are no reliable historical recordings of this practice. It has even been suggested that the phrase is derived from a practice by North American Indians or Inuit of chewing animal hides during their spare time, and even of British farmers chewing on smoked pork, but again, there is still no evidence supporting these claims. There are also claims that the phrase is synonymous with the action of chewing fat, or simply an allusion to the movement of the mouth during chewing. Noting that fried fat is appealing in taste, it was regarded as a treat that someone could chew on for as long as possible to gain the most out of it. Chewing the cud and Shoot the breeze, Shoot the Shit, are also phrases in the same family. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Chew the fat” first appeared in 1885 in a book by J. Brunlees Patterson called Life in the Ranks of the British Army in India. He implied it was a kind of general grumbling and bending of the ears of junior officers to stave off boredom, a typical part of army life Patterson also uses “chew the rag” in the same sentence he used “chew the fat”, but it is not the oldest occurrence. [Source of Origin – Wikipedia]

Usage: Informal or formal, spoken, general American and British English.

Idiomatic Meaning: To chat, converse, gossip, make small talk, or schmooze, with someone, in an idle or aimless manner

Literal Meaning:  To masticate, or chew fat, most likely for the flavor, as described in the above Origin section.

 Why is this funny?  The cartoon shows two polar bears chewing fat while chewing the fat about chewing fat. These guys are professional fat chewers if there is such a thing. We see them hanging out, relaxing and gabbing away, i.e. chewing the fat. And what is the subject of their conversation? Why FAT, of course!

Sample sentence:  Me and my homies love to just sit around and chew the fat.

PET NAMES

Origin: 1910-15.  A pet names is a hypocorism (from Greek, “to use child-talk”, a shorter or diminutive form of a word or given name. This is a reduction (in English) of a longer word to a single syllable, then adding -y or -ie to the end, such as movie (“moving picture”), telly (“television”) or Aussie (“Australian”’).  In other words, it’s a given name with a diminutive suffix. In some languages diminutive forms of names are used primarily when referring to children and the meaning can vary between tenderness and condescension when used for an adult.

Usage: Informal or formal, spoken or written, general American English.

Idiomatic Meaning: A name of endearment; an informal friendly name for a friend or member of your family;

Literal Meaning:  The name of your pet

 Why is this funny?  When you look at the cartoon, you may wonder, who the pet is. It should be the dog, but if you look at the way the dog and boy are standing and also what the dog is saying, then it’s almost the other way around. The dog, who is officially the “pet” clearly does not like his pet name, or the fact that the boy has changed it. He’s scolding the boy and posing the argument, asking how the boy would like it if the dog changed the boy’s name. So, the boy’s new pet name FOR the dog is not a pet name OF the dog!

Sample sentence:  I hate the pet name my girl friend has given me: “lambie-pie”.

BENT OUT OF SHAPE

Origin: Bent out of shape is another one of those idioms referring to body shape changing because of an emotional reaction. Bent as an adjective and verb was already in print in the 16^th century. A  similar phrase have your nose out of joint was also in use at that time.

Usage: Informal, spoken, general American English

Idiomatic Meaning: Upset, worried, anxious, annoyed, angry (sometimes needlessly, sometimes legitimately)

Literal Meaning:  This idiom assumes that the person speaking has a normal shape, that is, the same as a normal human being. When someone gets angry or upset, they change; their face gets red, their speech is affected and they might stutter or mispronounce words, their face might get contorted, or misshapen, even their body could change shape.  They could lose control over certain aspects of their bodies and get bent out of shape.

 Why is this funny?  The funniest part of this cartoon is that pretzels are normally bent into a bow shape. But the pretzel sitting on the bar stool, which itself is a pretty funny image, expressing his anger is DOUBLY bent out of shape. First in the idiomatic sense, he’s so angry that he’s out of control, he’s lost his composure because of the emotional stress. And not only has he lost his composure, he lost his shape! He no longer has the common bow-shape. He’s so bent out of shape that he’s become almost straight. This pretzel has some serious problems.

Sample sentence:  The professor ignored my comments, but I don’t think that it’s worth getting all bent out of shape over it.

A FRESH PAIR OF EYES

Origin: This is another common sense idiom of indeterminate origin. My personal opinion is that it’s not more than 15 years old. An alternate form of it is another pair of eyes. The use of fresh meaning “pure, new” stems from an older meaning of “unsalted” dating back to Old English in the late 13^th century.

Usage: Informal or formal, spoken or written, business and general American English.

Idiomatic Meaning:  another opinion, another person to examine something closely,

Literal Meaning:  There are actually two literal meanings of fresh eyes, being used simultaneously in this cartoon. The eyes are both fresh in the sense of being new to the situation, in other words, not being present before; the eyes are also fresh in the slang sense of not being respectful, impudent, or cheeky. This second meaning is U.S. slang, dating back to 1848. One can act fresh, talk fresh or be fresh. Usually it’s a man relating to a woman.

 Why is this funny?  This is a complicated cartoon, using both meanings of fresh. The pair of eyes in question are those of a crocodile, who has clearly altered the sign which used to read, beware of crocs.  He changed it to read, beware of ducks. This is confusing to the ducks and they are arguing among themselves as to the meaning. So they ask the crocodile to read it and help them understand it because they need a different perspective, i.e. a fresh pair of eyes. Nothing is really visible except the croc’s eyes which appear to be talking. The croc’s eyes are also saying something disrespectful or fresh to the duck when they reply, “Sure thing, cutie.” That’s also why they’re a fresh pair of eyes!

Sample sentence:  A fresh pair of eyes might find a lot of errors in this report.

JAM-PACKED

Origin: Jam-packed comes from the image of how jam is made. It’s actually fruit preserve. It can be most any fruit, but grape and apricot and strawberry are the most common. Before the days of refrigeration, the fruit was boiled and a lot of the liquid went off in steam leaving sugar and the bulk of the fruit. Sugar is a natural preservative and by putting it al into an airtight jar, the fruit, known as jam, will last for months, possibly years. It’s cousin is Jelly, which is similar but it has more liquid and less actual bits of fruit. When they put the jam into the jar the pack in as much as possible, hence the term jam-packed. When used as a verb jam  can also mean to force or cram something into something else.

Usage: Informal, spoken and written general American and British English

Idiomatic Meaning:  crowded, packed, or filled to capacity

Literal Meaning:  There could be two literal meanings: the first is something that is filled with jam, or even containers of jam; the second is a simile, i.e. something is packed in the same way that jam is packed.

 Why is this funny?  See a large auditorium filled to capacity with jars of jam. In fact it’s so crowded that two of the jars are complaining and planning to leave. If we were to open one of the jars, we’d see that the jar is filed to capacity as well with jam. So the jam-packed jars are jam-packed into the auditorium! There is a bonus joke here too. Keep in mind that the most common place that jam is used is on toast. In fact you even see a piece of toast listening in on the jams’ conversation. In the front on the stage or dais, we see a jar raising a glass as a “toast”. The other meaning of toast is to honor someone verbally and then clicking glasses with those around you. We also see one jar commenting about leaving when then toast is done. This is a double entendre because the exact same expression is said about cooking or toasting bread.

NO SPRING CHICKEN

Origin: The expression “now past a chicken,” meaning “no longer young,” was recorded as early as 1711 by Steele in ‘The Spectator’: ‘You ought to consider you are now past a chicken; this Humour, which was well enough in a Girl, is insufferable in one of your Motherly Character.’ ‘No spring chicken,’ an exaggeration of the phrase, is first recorded in America in 1906,” from the “Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997). The figurative meaning comes from the literal meaning: a young chicken, having tender meat. Some restaurant menus describe an offering as spring chicken to convince customers that the bird was slaughtered at the peak of perfection. This phrase doesn’t seem to be applied to young people very often anymore. Middle-aged and elderly women used to say “I’m no spring chicken,” meaning they were past young adulthood, when talking about their attractiveness or their health and energy level. [Source: www.phrases.org.uk]

Usage: Informal, spoken and written general American and British English

Idiomatic Meaning:  Not young anymore

Literal Meaning:  Assuming the chicken was born in late winter or early spring.  By the middle of spring the chicken will be young robust and healthy, ready to eat or be eaten. But a spring is also a metal coil that has bouncing properties, so a chicken attached to a spring could be called a spring chicken.

 Why is this funny?  There are two chickens in the cartoon; both are so old that neither one could be considered a spring chicken. However, since the brown one is standing on a pair of springs, we could say that the chicken with the springs is clearly no spring chicken!

Sample sentence:  Gladys needs to stop all that partying and stay home more often. After all, she’s no spring chicken.

ACE IN THE HOLE

Origin:  This originates from the game of stud poker, where a card dealt face down and kept hidden is called a ‘hole card’, the highest and strongest card being the ace. The earliest printed citation is from the Iowa newspaper The New Era, June 1886:Thus matters went on until four cards lay in front of each man, face up and one turned down. Not a pair in sight and everyone thought each man had an ace ‘in the hole’. The term was used as the title of a 1951 film, starring Kirk Douglas. The plot involved Douglas’s character delaying a rescue in order to cash in on the notoriety of having exclusive reporting rights to the rescue attempt. The term ace comes from Middle English as, from Anglo-French, from Latin, meaning unit, a copper coin. First Known Use - 14th century. [Source: phrases.org.uk]

Usage:   Informal, spoken, general American and Canadian English

Idiomatic Meaning:  Ahidden or secret strength or unrevealed advantage;

an effective and decisive argument or resource held in reserve

Literal Meaning:  An ace in the hole is an ace dealt face down to a player (as in stud poker) and not exposed until the showdown

 Why is this funny?  Joe, the golfer, is about to try to hit the ball into the hole. Even if he misses, he only needs to get it close because he has an ace in the hole who will guide the ball into the hole. The Ace is his “secret weapon” which no one can see. So we have both meanings of the idiom here - there is literally an ace in the (golf) hole, and that ace is a hidden advantage that Joe has over other players. Maybe someone else has a “jack-in-the-box” but it’s still not as good as an ace in the whole!    

Sample sentence:  The businessman’s ace in the hole is his political influence.