WIDE CHOICE OF IDIOMS, MAXIMS, AND PROVERBS

WIDE CHOICE OF IDIOMS, MAXIMS, AND PROVERBS

Writers can pick up idioms, maxims, and proverbs from a large number available in all languages. They enhance the style of writing and are attractive to the receivers of the message. There are many such expressions that are vying with one another and wanting, willing and asking to be picked up by the communicators. Thus if senders of the message have a better command over the language and vocabulary, they would be more proficient in selecting the right ones. A few examples are:

(1) The colleague who always speaks to the point can also be described as a person who never „minces his words‟ or he is „cut and dry‟.

(2) Raju, a villager, was always getting drunk and falling in the gutter. He would beat his wife „black and blue‟, snatching her money and „blowing it up on drinks‟. His family was fed up with him. He did not have any friends „worth the name‟. When Raju‟s life came to an end, his family „breathed a sigh of relief‟. One fine morning, he was found dead in a gutter. Someone said that Raju „breathed his last‟ but one could also say that he „kicked the bucket‟.

EVOLUTION OF IDIOMS, MAXIMS, AND PROVERBS

Following examples are illustrative:

(1) Story of kicking the bucket
One view is the bucket in the story does not refer to a bucket as such but to a wooden frame used in the olden days to hang freshly killed pigs.
Another theory is that the idiom was coined by looking at the way people took their own lives. Such persons kept the bucket upside down to stand on, put the noose hanging from the ceiling around their neck and then kicked the bucket from underneath.

(2) Story of sour grapes
Leila was „head over heel‟ in love with Rahul but he „spurned her overtures‟ and married Pooja. Leila was very much upset but went about pretending that she „knew in her heart of hearts‟ that Rahul was not the sticking type. Someone said it is a clear case of „sour grapes‟ as mentioned in Aesop‟s fable, „The Fox and the Sour Grapes‟.