As is usually the start for most of my posts these days, the Wifey and I were watching TV and passing back and forth the usual chatter that makes up our evening fun
I saw a commercial for a horrible new show on FOX called BOOT CAMP and I said “The BLOOM is off the rose for reality TV shows.”
She said the phrase is “The BLUSH is off the rose”
Well, the bickering led to the NET, and with no usefult results, I come, once again, to the teeming millions.
Please help. There is an expensive McDonald’s lunch riding on this.
BLOOM is correct, says Braindoggy as he BLUSHes and turns to quietly slink from the room so as not to actually involve himself in the domestic melee that will follow.
Completely unscientific, but a search in Google for “bloom is off the rose” as a phrase gives 1030 hits. A similar search for “blush is off the rose” gives 42 hits. So the more popular usage is “bloom”.
Of course, “blush” could be correct if there is an original source floating around out there. I had no luck finding anything about the origins of this phrase anywhere though. Maybe because it’s so obvious?
Being quite a landscaper I would have to say that when you have a rose bush, aka ‘rose’, & the blossom (bloom) falls off, then indeed the bloom has fallen off the rose.
So both are right. e.g Websters:
1 a : any of a genus (Rosa of the family Rosaceae, the rose family) of usually prickly shrubs with pinnate leaves and showy flowers having five petals in the wild state but being often double or partly double under cultivation b : the flower of a rose.
