I am prompted to this thread by one I just used: “turns out”.
We all know what it means: “it became apparent” or “it was revealed”. It refers to something unknown which became known. I just used it to say that I was taking Wellbutrin to stop smoking years ago and discovered that I was allergic, so I said “turns out I am allergic”.
How in the world did “turns out” come to mean that? I’m sure it got there through some logical morphing, but from 2011 English, I can’t see it.
And while I can’t think of any other such phrases right this second, I know the language is brimming wiht them, phrases that we all understand perfectly because they are long embedded in the language, but when you take them apart and examine the definitions of the individual words, it is utterly baffling how they came to mean what we all accept them to mean now.
That’s not what “turns out” means. It means “results” or “ends up”, and the full phrase is “it turned out” when in the past tense. “It turned out I was allergic to it” means “The situation ended up with me allergic to it.”
That is only baffling if you only consider “turn” in its most literal sense.
There’s a long established metaphor of speaking about a sequence of events as though it is moving along a path - a turn is a deviation from what is expected or has gone before. You can take a bad turn, do a good turn, turn up in an unexpected place.
“Turns out” suggests denouement of a situation. “At the end of all the turns…”
One I’ve always wondered about is “head over heels”, to indicate something surprising or extraordinary. But your head is almost always over your heels, anyway: It’s the normal state of affairs. It seems to me that someone should be “heels over head in love”, or whatever, to indicate a total upset of usual life.
Yes, you’re right! Der… But in my example, it kinda means both, really: my being allergic to it was almost certainly an existing situation that my taking it revealed.
That’s some progress aong the path, definitely, but why out? Are you “in” as your progress through the path?
! I never thought of that. My brain always turned it into a visual of a person being, in fact, heels over head! And that is how it started, but evidently the first written version of it, in the 14th century was as “head over heels” for some reason, and it’s been so ever since.
In looking that up I was actually led to a page that gave a great description of how “turn out” means what it means:
I used the expression “try and hid his ___” (in this case incredulity) in a story this week, and had to look it up to make sure it was correct. Why try and hide a response instead of try to hide the response? The “and” is weird. But it’s commonly used to the tune of over 2 million hits.
Someone going ape-shit. OK, going ape I can understand. I can picture an enraged ape. But going ape-shit? What, somebody goes warm, soft, steamy, and smelly?
Edit: Come to think of it, what’s so crazy about bat shit?
Interestingly enough, when you want to know how something turned out, you want to know how it went. The word that gave us the preterite went is the archaic word wend meaning to turn. Originally the past tense of wend was went but as English evolved, go stole went and wend settled with wended.
Being “beside himself” with some strong emotion. I assume it means that one isn’t quite oneself if extremely emotional or agitated so it’s as if another person appears. If that makes sense.
Because enraged apes tend to throw their shit at whatever pisses them off?
It seems to me that ‘I could care less’ should mean the opposite (or nearly so) of what it appears to mean: if you could care less, there is some degree to which you care; however, the phrase is mostly employed to say ‘I don’t care’, which seems like it would mean you couldn’t care less.
I think someone made movie all about the journey of the word fuck. i can’t recall details, though I do remember an essay or monologue wherein someone pointed out that “fuck” has a use as almost every part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.
Yes.
One possibility: “batshit crazy” = “a lot of crazy” because batshit is found in humongous quantities where bats live?
Good call.
That’s just one of those errors people make so often that it’s starting to become sort of acceptable-ish; the correct statement is, as you say, “I couldn’t care less”. I have a current peeve that I am sure will end up being correct just because everyone says it, and I can’t seem to stop flinching every time I hear it: “continue on” you go on, you continue, you don’t continue on.
I’ve heard it defended a few times as being ironic. The people saying it are saying it ironically. I think that’s a load of crap. Most people say it because they think that’s how it’s supposed to be said.
