In many other threads here, we’ve lamented that the publishing companies think Americans so stupid, that they needed to re-title the first Harry Potter book. “Those Americans”, they thought, “Those Americans wouldn’t have a clue what a Philosopher’s Stone is. Let’s just call it a Sorcerer’s Stone, so we don’t confuse them.”
Well, maybe they were right. Every week, I get an e-mail from one Robert Park, of the American Physical society. It’s a newsletter-type thing, discussing that week’s news stories in the sciences, mostly pointing out various acts of (what he considers) idiocy.
In this week’s edition, he’s discussing the Missile Defense System and the ABM treaty, and comments that “It’s not like we had an ABM system to install in any case, but the U.S. will continue searching for the sorcerer’s stone, and could withdraw later.”
Now, remember: This is a well-grounded, educated man. He’s speaking to an audience other well-educated folks (the newsletter is mostly just distributed to physicists). And he’s metaphorically referring to an object which exists only in the mind of some publishing executive. Not even in the mind of generations of mythologists, or the collective folklore of ages, but a publishing executive.
And that’s not the only thing wrong with that phrase. Even if he did mean “philosopher’s stone,” he’s still wrong. The philosopher’s stone wasn’t a panacea, which is the apparent sense behind the phrase above. It was said to be a prime ingredient in the solution to several alchemical goals, including the secret of immortality and the formula for the transmutation of base metals into gold. But it wasn’t the Universal Problem-Solver.
Hey, even the best of us can screw up a metaphor pretty easily. Last night, my wife, complaining of feeling out of place in a certain situation, stated she felt like a “lone duck”. She meant “odd duck” but got caught between “lone eagle” and “lame duck”.
QtM:She meant “odd duck” but got caught between “lone eagle” and “lame duck”.
Ooh, I love those mix-and-matched idioms! (What do you call them? They’re not exactly “mixed metaphors” because they’re not always strictly metaphorical.) I once heard someone telling somebody else to “hold down the fort” in his absence: nope, you “hold the fort” against the invaders, whereas you “hold down a job”.
Anyone got others? Assuming Chronos has got his lament off his chest now and doesn’t mind the hijack, that is.
A spoonerism is when you transpose initial phonemes, i.e. “queer old dean” for “dear old queen” or “You hissed my mystery class” rather than “you missed my history class”.
Malapropism is probably closer to what Qadgop was describing.
(just a note for the linguistically interested…spoonerisms are named after the Rev. Spooner, a 19th-century English minister and instructor at Oxford(?). In the vein of Sam Goldwyn, Rev. Spooner is said to have noted that most of the misspeeches attributed to him are fictional.
Malapropisms are named after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan’s The Rivals who mangled her English with an offhanded glee.)
Curiously, the same film here in Canada is entitled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” I don’t know what deep thought to draw from the difference in treatment.