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#139996 - 12/16/03 05:49 PM
Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Diamond Poster
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Colorado
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Ken from Pegasus used the phrase “tilting at windmills” in another post today and it got me thinking. There are some catch phrases that I have never understood. I kind of get what it means in context, but I’ve never known what it literally means or how it came into usage. “Tilting at windmills” is one of those. Another is “Beyond the pale”.
Does anyone know what either of those mean? Anyone have any others they don’t really get?
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#139997 - 12/16/03 05:51 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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TN
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Although I'm only guessing, I would guess that 'tilting at windmills' has something to do with Don Quixote. As for the other, I have no idea and I've never heard that one.
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#139999 - 12/16/03 06:00 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Power Poster
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"Beyond the pale" refers to conduct outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. "The Pale" was the part of Russia to which Jews were confined, at least those who were not killed in a pogrom.
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#140000 - 12/16/03 06:00 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Turnpike Exit 10
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BEYOND THE PALE (via a Google search)
Pail vs. pale:
That’s a common misspelling these days because the word that really belongs in the expression has gone out of use except in this one case. The expression is properly beyond the pale. That word pale has nothing to do with the adjective for something light in colour except that both come from Latin roots. The one referring to colour is from the Latin verb pallere, to be pale, whilst our one is from palus, a stake.
A pale is an old name for a pointed stake driven into the ground to form part of a fence and—by obvious extension—to a barrier made of such stakes, a fence (our modern word paling is from the same source, as are pole and impale). This meaning has been around in English since the fourteenth century. By 1400 it had taken on various figurative senses, such as a defence, a safeguard, a barrier, an enclosure, or a limit beyond which it was not permissible to go.
In particular, it was used to describe various defended enclosures of territory inside other countries. For example, the English pale in France in the fourteenth century was the territory of Calais, the last English possession in that country. The best-known modern example is the Russian Pale, between 1791 up to the Revolution in 1917, which were specified provinces and districts within which Russian Jews were required to live. Another famous one is the Pale in Ireland, that part of the country over which England had direct jurisdiction—it varied from time to time, but was an area of several counties centred on Dublin. The first mention of the Irish Pale is in a document of 1446–7. Though there was an attempt later in the century to enclose the Pale by a bank and ditch (which was never completed), there never was a literal fence around it.
The expression beyond the pale, meaning outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour, came much later. The idea behind it was that civilisation stopped at the boundary of the pale and beyond lay those who were not under civilised control and whose behaviour therefore was not that of gentlemen. A classic example appears in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, dated 1837: “I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself beyond the pale of society, by his most audacious, disgraceful, and abominable public conduct”. The earliest example I’ve found is from Sir Walter Scott in 1819.
It may be older than this, but it surely doesn’t date back to the period of the Irish Pale, or anywhere near. It is often said that it does come directly from that political enclosure, but the three-century gap renders that very doubtful indeed. The idea behind it is definitely the same, though.
Last edited by Maria KFSB; 12/16/03 06:01 PM.
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#140002 - 12/16/03 06:06 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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#140003 - 12/16/03 06:09 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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New Jersey
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As long as we're on the subject of windmills:
Windmills have four panels, or sheets, which catch the wind. When one of the sheets falls off, the windmill tilts in a crazy and irregular manner. Hence the expression "three sheets to the wind" for a drunken person's unstable gait.
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#140005 - 12/16/03 06:30 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Diamond Poster
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Cool! Thanks Maria and Steve. I had an idea that "beyond the pale" meant outside acceptable behavior, and I knew it had something to do with the treatment of Jews in Russia, but now that I know a "pale" is a stake that could be driven into the ground, it all makes perfect sense!
Sometimes BOL is like having your own personal encyclopedia!
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#140006 - 12/16/03 06:40 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Guess if we had been thinking - 'impaled'. Makes sense, doesn't it?
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#140007 - 12/16/03 07:06 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Diamond Poster
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A Grant Wood painting.
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"It is better to remain silent and be thought dumb than to speak and remove all doubt". Lincoln? Right?
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#140008 - 12/16/03 07:12 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Quote:
"It is better to remain silent and be thought dumb than to speak and remove all doubt". Lincoln? Right?
Twain.
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#140009 - 12/16/03 07:25 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Diamond Poster
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,357
A Grant Wood painting.
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Dang! I hate being wrong! "Worrying is like a rocking chair-you rock and rock and get no where." - My father's great grandmother. Not an adage but at least I know who said it. (She may have heard it somewhere.)
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#140010 - 12/16/03 07:59 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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I found this definition of three sheets to the winds on Google. - "It means drunk. Three sheets to (or in) the wind is a nautical expression. If three sheets - which are the ropes holding the sails rather than the sails themselves - are loose and blowing about then the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor. I don't know where it originated but I expect it was from the British Navy. Dickens uses it in Dombey and Son."
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#140012 - 12/16/03 08:16 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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All over the map.
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Quote:
So how 'bout the expression "Pushing the envelope" used when someone gets very near or crosses certain accepted boundaries?
or nose to the grindstone?
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#140013 - 12/16/03 08:29 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Pushing the envelope: expression meaning: to strech the boundaries of something to go beyond the known limits of safe performance a set of performance limits that may not be safely exceeded to test the limits of what is permissible in a given situation origin: This expression comes out of the US Air Force test pilot program of the late 1940's onwards. The "envelope" was the technical limits of the high performance airplanes that test pilots flew, ie., the designers technical specifications. So, to "push the envelope" was to go beyond these specifications to see just exactly what these aircraft would do. I'll take a wild guess and say that they mostly crashed. The expression was popularised by Tom Wolfe in his book "The right stuff" (1979) and then the movie "Top Gun." Because the section of Wolfe's book in which it first appears focusses heavily on Chuck Yeager's exploits, it is tempting to ascribe the coinage to him, but the phrase was just a general Air Force test pilot one. The idea of of using the word "envelope" as a kind of enclosing boundary is not a new one. In 1899 Arnold Bennett wrote: "My desire is to depict the deeper beauty while abiding by the envelope of facts." usage: Modern technology is pushing the envelope of what can be done with a computer. Everyday there seems to be some new gadget out that lets us do something more or something better on our computers. Excerpted from Taiwan Teacher ----Maria
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Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain
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#140014 - 12/16/03 08:38 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Anonymous
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My father told me that "getting down to brass tacks " refers to the old dry goods store when women did not buy ready-made dresses, but purchased fabric and made their own. Brass tacks were driven into the counter to measure off an exact yard of material. Thus the expression means to get the details right. Also, "dead as a doornail" refers to the way doors were made with planks laid side by side and cross pieces nailed on to hold them together. The points that came through the opposite side were hammered down or"deadened". There used to be a column in our Sunday paper called "Take Our Word for It". No longer there, but I sure found it interesting for things like this. Anybody still get that column?
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#140017 - 12/18/03 05:47 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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My great grandma used to say "back it up potato row". Anyone got an origin for that?
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#140019 - 12/18/03 06:39 PM
Re: Tilting at windmills and other adages
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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I don't remember her saying it, but my grandma and my mom both use the expression when someone is in the way.
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