{"id":14946,"date":"2014-07-24T11:13:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T18:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2014\/07\/24\/more-recombinant-idioms.html"},"modified":"2019-05-17T09:53:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T16:53:13","slug":"more-recombinant-idioms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2014\/07\/24\/more-recombinant-idioms\/","title":{"rendered":"More recombinant idioms"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The following bit from an old Dr Who<\/cite> episode popped into my head this morning:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Seventh Doctor<\/b>: Time and tide melt the snowman.<\/p>\r\n

Mel<\/b>: Doctor, \"wait for *no* man.\"<\/p>\r\n

Doctor<\/b>: So who's waiting?<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

I never actually saw the episode, but I liked the quote, though it may not be precisely accurate. So I went to check on the phrasing, and ended up finding some other Seventh Doctor-isms; I particularly liked “Fools rush in where horses fear to drink.”<\/p>\r\n

Elliott has been calling this sort of thing a “recombinant idiom” for a long time. I only just learned, from the Wikipedia article about the Seventh Doctor, that they're also known as “dundrearyisms<\/a>,” after a character from the play Our American Cousin<\/cite>, which I've never seen nor read.<\/p>\r\n

While I'm here, here are a couple from Elliott from a long time ago that I never got around to posting.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

The administration has the upper ground.<\/p>\r\n

—Professor emeritus Nathan Glazer, in a 2003 New York Times<\/cite> article<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

And:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

That way, the public will be more secure that we're not trying to pull a fast one over their eyes.<\/p>\r\n

—Moses Carey of the Orange County (NC) Board of County Commissioners, in a 2003 Chapel Hill News<\/cite> article<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

And:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

To say that the world is trying to destroy “the romance of depression,” and by doing so end the future of literature and art, is a load of crock.<\/p>\r\n

—Liz Kuzemski of Greenfield, MA, in a letter to the editor of the Valley Advocate<\/cite>, Feb. 17-23, 2000.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

And finally:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Bush's visit to the vehemently anti-Catholic Jones college is a wedge big enough to drive a candidacy through.<\/p>\r\n

—Newsweek<\/cite>, March 13, 2000, p. 34<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following bit from an old Dr Who episode popped into my head this morning: Seventh Doctor: Time and tide melt the snowman. Mel: Doctor, “wait for *no* man.” Doctor:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny","category-idioms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17929,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14946\/revisions\/17929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}