Am reading the current Ruth Rendell: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me. Little more than halfway through, one character tells his solicitor he’d like to sue the Sun and the Mail and so forth for libel. The solicitor tells him, “When it comes to newspaper editors (and solicitors), don’t touch their ears.”
Now obviously, that means “Don’t mess with them”. But what does the phrase derive from? Is it like, if you touch someone’s ear you’re asking for a fight, which you don’t want to do with editors?
[spoiler]Like everything else by Rendell, this book is terrific. But it’s incredible how Zillah has managed to do everything wrong since day one. Though that’s partly Jims’ fault, at least his omission: he should have made it more clear that he was offering a job, and outlined the duties of the job.
Poor Minty. I really hope she gets away with it. But either way, she needs help. I’m flashing back to Dolly Yearman in The Killing Doll, who also heard ghosts that weren’t there; they couldn’t have been, because they were giving her false information. Jordan needs some help too, poor kid. And if Eugenie were my daughter, I would be crying out, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome child?”[/spoiler]
Huh. Well, maybe she made it up…but see, that’s what I can’t imagine Rendell doing. She’s never before tried to introduce catch phrases; she draws heavily on speech and fashion and activity that is already popular. (I’ve always liked that about her; the way she makes each novel clearly of its time, but not so much that it becomes dated. Except…how old should Inspector Wexford be now, on this timeline—ninety?)
So what the hey? The solicitor says this is what his dad told him when he was a kid, which was probably thirty years ago, and the novel is definitely set in 2000.
Aha! Maybe that’s it; maybe none of y’all have heard it because it’s thirty years out of date!
never heard of it either - the only possible reference I can think of is the ‘war of Jenkin’s ear’ in Elizabethan times (i think) a war was supposedly started because a sailor got his ear cut off in a bar fight - but I can’t see the connection to solicitors or editors.
I’ve never heard this as an expression, as such, but what it makes me think of is dogs. I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I seem to have come across more than a few dogs that have quite sensitive ears, and don’t like them played with. You can pat them, stroke them, hug them, roll around on the floor with them, pull them around by their tail, and they’ll sit there grinning with their tongue hanging out – but touch their ears, and RROWF! They’ll have your arm off.