Step Up to the Plate and Cut Bait!
Ah, such heavenly-mindedness as this Lord's Day concludes!
Some people collect stamps, others collect antiques or coins or baseball cards. Hey, some collect ex-spouses. I collect mixed metaphors. Here are two of my favorites.
"A real fly-by-the-shoestring operation." Source: my dear wife. Approximate date: oh, late 1990s sometime, I dunno. I remember we were driving through our neighborhood talking about a local business that, well, if it traded on eBay it would have one of your lower feedback ratings. Home improvements, maybe? The quaint expression stuck with me but not the context.
"Another kink in the monkey wrench." This beauty appears to be a high speed collision between a kink in the chain and a wrench in the works, with the wrench and the chain getting ejected into the weeds, and the remaining occupants of both vehicles awaking from surgery to find themselves joined in a whole new kind of bad. It issued forth from the lips of a sales rep I was talking with at one of my old jobs.
Some people collect stamps, others collect antiques or coins or baseball cards. Hey, some collect ex-spouses. I collect mixed metaphors. Here are two of my favorites.
"A real fly-by-the-shoestring operation." Source: my dear wife. Approximate date: oh, late 1990s sometime, I dunno. I remember we were driving through our neighborhood talking about a local business that, well, if it traded on eBay it would have one of your lower feedback ratings. Home improvements, maybe? The quaint expression stuck with me but not the context.
"Another kink in the monkey wrench." This beauty appears to be a high speed collision between a kink in the chain and a wrench in the works, with the wrench and the chain getting ejected into the weeds, and the remaining occupants of both vehicles awaking from surgery to find themselves joined in a whole new kind of bad. It issued forth from the lips of a sales rep I was talking with at one of my old jobs.
These are the only two I can think of at this moment, but I know I've got more tucked away somewhere. In any event, please help! I welcome your submissions! My only requirement is that they have to be real, meaning that somebody somewhere really said it without intentionally mixing metaphors. Suitable candidates can come from your own silver tongue, or from someone's you know, or from anything published in print, broadcast or online media. Just keep it real, people.
UPDATE April 21, 2008: from somebody's comment on somebody else's blog: "treading on dangerous waters." This one's in medal contention.
posted by Aaron @ 6:32 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
So Pogo-isms don't count?
Like, "How sharper than a child's tooth is a thankless serpent," or "The way to a man's heart is through the soft underbelly."
I guess those are more mangled metaphors than mixed, but I still love love LOVE them.
Oh, and I always used to wince at how Joseph W. Tkach used to say, "There is none so blind as those who refuse to look." ouchouchouchOUCCHouch on so many levels.
OK, NE Iowa Mom, I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake here. Is the aphorism that he's, er, personalizing supposed to be "There are none so blind as those who refuse to see" or what? We've got a bit of a subject-verb agreement problem, and of course with hindsight I just love the irony of a cult leader offering that little bit of wisdom. What other levels did you have in mind?
And yes, I'm afraid I must disqualify Pogo-isms, as wonderful as they are. Mr. Kelly knew exactly what he was doing.
Oh, it was the misquote and the grammar problem that got to me. And the cult thing, of course.
You might want to turn off anonymous comments on your blog, you get spammed a lot if you leave them on.
All right, I got one. This was on an eBay chat board and refers to the phishers who try to hijack people's eBay (and thus other) accounts. These crooks are "as sneaky as greased lightning."
Thank you, northeast iowa mom! Surely now you can see that collecting mixed metaphors is as easy as water off a baby.
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