I was thinking about the phrase ‘The pot calling the kettle black’. It comes from a time where cooking was done over open fires and cookware would become visibly ashy. (Fun fact: It first appears and was perhaps coined by Cervantes in Don Quixote!)
What are some other idioms that have lost their literal connection to time? What would be a good modern replacement?
Eating a dead horse - not unless you buy the budget beef mince at Tesco
Read like rabbits - rabbits can’t read or even hold books
Nip it in the butt - that’s sexual assault, you’re not allowed to do that any more
Get down off your high horse - you’re not allowed to get animals high either
Kids should be shorn and not herd - goats have hair, not wool, and can’t be shorn. Their natural tendency to herd is a difficult behaviour to break.
Under the weather - unless you’re a pilot you’re going to be under the weather most of the time
A blessing in the skies - unless your bishop is a pilot too, that’s not going to happen.
Fight off more than you can chew - I don’t know where to start with this one,
Boneappletea
You almost got me.
surely there’s a /s or a trollface i’m missing
I’m not pulling your Greg, if that’s what you mean.
You leave my Greg alone. He’s perfectly capable pulling himself & if he needs help I have gloves!
I was half expecting that to have been posted by LadyMondegreen
In my home country they say “Cheap as Onions” (eq in English : Cheap as Dirt)
Looking at the prices on Onions nowadays …
A stitch in time saves nine.
This refers to a time when clothes were hard to come by and often homemade. If they tore, a small tear could be fixed with one stitch of needle and thread, but if let go too long, it would take many more stitches to repair a bigger rip.
Change your oil (or tires) in time, or change your car.
This is still relevant, please take care of your clothes.
All the horse ones because we don’t use horses anymore. There a ton of them.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Who tf gets a gift horse?
Saddle up. Who tf has a saddle?
Hold your horses. Who tf has horses to hold?
Get off your high horse. Who tf has a high horse?
Beat a dead horse. WTF.
Great examples! ‘champing at the bit’ also comes to mind. I think cars fill in pretty nicely as a horse substitute. ‘Saddle up’ has ‘buckle up’. Hold your horses has ‘Hit your brakes’. As for gift horses… ‘Don’t look a gift car under the hood?’ Hmm doesn’t quite work
“Don’t check the resale value of a gift car” maybe
But presumably a gift horse is worth something as long as it walks. This summer my kid got a “gift car” and it was critical look at both the undercarriage and the resale value. Thank goodness he was only out the cost of a tow and mechanics inspection
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Who tf gets a gift horse?
A buddy in college accidentally said “gifted horse“. Then his girlfriend said “very much so” and we never let him hear the end of it
I dunno. Yamiks still beats on horses… In both ways.
“Burning the midnight oil”
Your using your battery without a wall charger, huh?
Good one! I would offer ‘Draining the house battery’ as a replacement but it doesn’t really have a ring to. Maybe ‘You’ve been living in low blue light mode’. No that’s even worse! somebody help me here 😅.
Never getting your phone on the charger?
24/7 bandwidth draw?
Ignite the midnight petroleum.
In Portuguese the equivalent expression is timeless: “o sujo falando do mal lavado” (the dirty one talking about the badly washed).
To be honest, I was never prepared to know what “hoisted by one’s own pitard” meant, and knowing today, I still have no clue how this was ever relevant to any time period.
A pitard is a timed bomb used to to blow down a door or wall. The idiom is about blowing yourself up mistakenly instead. Were people using these routinely at some point?
So is “hoisted” in this case the equivalent of “yeeted”?
before the invention of doorknobs, doors were indeed single use. they would be blown open with every use. this is why we invented chamber pots. midnight bathroom breaks were very loud, before people had pots.
I would like to subscribe to your history newsletter.
“Pulling my leg.” Meaning you are making something up/joking at someones expense.
It does not have any real connection to the present. The idiom came about in the mid-19th century. There’s two competing theories about how it came about. The prevailing theory is that pick pockets, particularly child pick pockets, would pull on people legs to distract their mark. The darker theory is that it was related to pulling someone’s legs when they were hanged in order to finish the ordeal if they didn’t die from the initial drop.
Great example! That one is so ingrained that I never even realised it didn’t make literal sense! Maybe a modern replacement could be something like ‘You’re hiding a camera’
Wearing metas?
Cap
Not quite updating, but in my house we say “like sweeping the yard” to indicate that something is pointless and wasting time.
“Boss has us doing obviously pointless busy work today”
“Yeah, next he’ll be having us sweep the yard!”
Or derogatorily:
“I want you to go do that thing.”
“Sure, you want me sweep the yard when I’m done?”
With the invention of leaf blowers, “sweeping the yard” is real! Or at least for literal yards …… I have no idea in your industry
Threshhold
from the time we spread threshes on the floor inside homes and a lip was needed to keep them spilling out.
Modern version?
Ohdear. Cause you yell something along that line when you hit it with your toe.
Ass over teakettle.
I don’t think there is a modern equivalent idiom for taking a sloppy fall
The crypto bro trolling the AI bro. It would be a nice modern substitute lol, IF I understand what the meaning is, eng is not my native language, but as I understood it’s: Someone bad calling out someone other bad
It’s a touch stilted but it gets the idea across! May I ask your first language? Any old idioms there that no longer make literal sense in the modern world?
