CNN tells us that “another American Idol contestant was sent packing.”
Actually, no. Another contestant was sent home. To send someone packing means to dismiss them with no warning, or to tell them to get out now, this minute, or else. Or perhaps both. The visual would be of someone being ordered or physically forced out while still trying to cram everything into their suitcase. IOW, they’re still packing while they’re being sent.
So it doesn’t apply to AI contestants. They all know that there’s a possibility that they’ll have to leave on Wednesday night, and when it does happen, they’re given ample time to pack their stuff. No threats hurled after them, either, which is also a feature of being sent packing.
I enjoy these threads; I always learn something. Like, last time I learned, or rather was reminded, that “the lion’s share” is the whole thing, not the largest portion. :smack: And I read Aesop’s Fables! How could I not remember that?
Yes, and that’s what happens. They are told to leave. Not to leave in three days, or when they feel like it, but there and then. Unless you want to be really nitpicky about it, and then nothing less than being frogmarched out will suffice.
Here’s yet another definition which fully fits with the use in this context:
Okay, can someone explain the correct usage of the phrase “begs the question” to me? I’ve read rants here about the way it’s commonly, incorrectly, used, and two or three explanations of its correct usage, but I still don’t get it. Help?
Maybe this should be “Time for another thread with unresearched assertations.”
I think originally “begging the question” answering the question with what was being asked. Or something like that. It has evolved into just meaning “brings up the question.” Such is the life of an idiom.
To simplify even further, in this usage, to “beg the question” is to avoid the question entirely and answer something nobody asked.
I, for one, tend to favor the modern (“incorrect”) usage. For a response to “beg the question” seems like an abbreviated way to say that the response is, figuratively, begging for another (presumably obvious) question to be asked. It may sound less than gramatically perfect, but given today’s near-exclusive usage of “beg” to mean “plead”, IMHO it offends one’s sensibilities less than interpreting it as “avoid”.
Well, to me, “sent packing” does mean “frogmarched out”. Which is not what happens to dismissed AI contestants. Over the course of the competition, 22 of them (not counting the runner-up, who will be standing right next to the winner at the finale) will be dismissed. It happens; it still doesn’t mean they don’t get enough time to pack their stuff, or that no one says goodbye. And they all know that there’s a possibility of being the one who leaves that week, so it’s not a disgrace that applies only to them.
The only one I would classify as having been sent packing was Corey Clark, because he was disqualified, not voted off. And there probably were some harsh words. Otherwise, they’re just cooperating with the terms of the contract.
Rilchiam Sent packing simply means being told to pack up and go.
And it doesn’t require a rush, a deadline, or a suitcase.
A baseball player sent packing is sent to pack his stuff, at his leasure, and go home by the next convenient train. not sent home while in the process of packing. That would be too rare a usage to be useful, and nobody understands it that way but you.
How about if to me, “sent packing” means “force-fed with chicken stew”? If your own interpretation of a phrase differs from everybody else’s, who is ‘correct’?
I don’t know that this was its original intent, but in general it’s used in the context of “however it may seem to you,” the implication being that it is neither a dump nor a palace, but is just a humble abode of no particular note.
I’m curious about a redundancy like “so it is” when used as a meaningless adjunct to a statement of fact. “This is my house, so it is.” “My brother’s car is red, so it is.” The wife says it, as does her family, and I’ve heard it elsewhere, too. It seems like a regional quirk of some kind.
