“For What It’s Worth” – Really lame people sometimes put this at the end of a message board post or corporate email. Does this really convey any information at all? It seems like a shortened version of “I offer the above advice for what it’s worth.” Why else would you give advice except if you believed it had worth? The only alternative seems to be, “I offer the above not for what it’s worth, but just to hear myself ramble”?
“…came to a grinding halt”. Regardless of what it is that is grinding, wouldn’t it stop grinding once it has reached the state of being in a halt? “Ground to a halt” I can understand. But the halt itself can’t be grinding, only the process of reaching the halt. The dictionary says the verb “to halt” means to come to a stop, but the noun “halt” means the condition of being stopped.
By the way, when I looked up “halt” on dictionary.com, I accidentally typed in dictionry.com, and I got a page that described itself as “links to online dictioneries [sic]”. I found that rather amusing.
No, the general usage is: “Here is an idea. I don’t know what merit it has, but it may be useful. That can be determined later.”
It means “it comes to a halt making a grinding sound.” “Coming to a halt” is an action. It is not halted; it is reaching that state and makes a sound while doing so (though the image is that the brakes are suddenly being applied – and the phrase probably returns to train brakes, which were very noisy when applied.)
Lots of colloquialisms make no sense. “Cheap at half the price”, for instance, is one of my pet peeves. It seems to be used to imply that something is good value for money. But virtually anything would be considered cheap if you halved its price.
I think it’s more like a shortened version of “for whatever it’s worth.” The speaker offers the information without any guarantee as to its value. May be worth a lot; may be worth nothing.
Huh, I’d always heard ‘cheap at twice the price’ (actually, read - I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say this out loud), but a quick Google nets 19,700 for ‘half’ and 17,700 for ‘twice’. My WAG would be that it was originally sarcastic, and then lost that meaning.
If that were true, it would be “came grindingly to a halt”, which is almost the same as “ground to a halt” which makes perfect sense. But “halt”, used as a noun, means the condition of being stopped, not the process of coming to a stop. In that sense, a halt can’t be grinding, but halting can be.
Regarding the train brakes, maybe what they mean is that the train stopped so suddenly it locked up its wheels, which I can imagine would make a grinding sound as they skidded along the rails.
But you have to remember that this message board probably contains several megabytes of arguments over whether saying “nucular” should be a Constitutional disqualification for the Presidency, and whether execution or merely life in prison is a suitable punishment for people who don’t use apostrophe’s correctly. So around here, I’m par for the course.
Since the phrase in question includes “came to …” it isn’t a giant stretch to think that what’s being described is the process - that included grinding - of coming to a stop, rather than a state of stoppage that continues to grind.
To be sure, “came grinding to a halt” might be more precise. But it may be unrealistic to expect high precision from colloquialisms.
By itself maybe. But “grinding” is a modifier which makes a noun phrase “grinding halt” which has a different meaning. See also “rolling stop” and “California stop”. “He died a slow death” is acceptable for the same reason, even though once you are dead, it can’t be said to have any speed. There are many examples of this - “a slow boil”, for instance.
Whenever I hear the phrase “grinding halt” I picture some kind of axle making a grinding noise, losing speed and eventually seizing. Grinding = grinding metal or something.
