tlb wrote:tlb wrote:Then lets just take my criticisms as given and permit this dog to scratch himself and go to sleep.
PS. I do not expect that we are particularly street; so the Urban Dictionary might not be normally applicable.
cthia wrote:Huh? I simply used the first dictionary I came upon. The idiom is a very common part of American slang.
tlb wrote:The problem with analogies and idioms is that they require you and your listener to share a background. That is why it is safer to avoid them when talking to a wider audience. Perhaps this was a common idiom when you grew up; I am only familiar with it from a few movies (usually starring Joe Pesci as a mobster), it was never a part of the slang when I grew up. On this forum, the only guaranteed background is provided by the books.
PS. I expect the definition given, "to want to cause physical harm to someone", is very much a euphemism for "wanting to f**k someone up" which better corresponds to the imagery.
cthia wrote:Here you are suggesting to an American that he shouldn't even use American idioms to discuss an American work of fiction, in light of youngsters that may have been suckling when the idiom was vogue. It never went into obscurity if you ask me.
I don't know what else to tell ya. But to say no offense was ever intended and that I thought I showed patience in explaining my stance, knowing there are foreigners and people who just didn't get it. I simply like book discussions. Once upon a time I frequented several in the areas I was living at the time. As a male, I was always outnumbered, and in several I was the only male. Though the females loved my input.
I'm all about the discussion w/o favoritism or nepotism though I am human and can be affected by it as well as anyone.
Someone once stated in another thread that my family always agrees with me.
I am an American and retired, so not a youngster. I merely say that what you call "American" idioms do not have the widespread usage that you think they do. I accept that you did not mean to give offense when you used that expression several times over the course of our back and forth.
You are free to say whatever you want (within the limits set by Duckk); but I have tried to explain to you that the embellishments are not always helpful to your cause.
I. . .
acknowledge what you say about the embellishments. But when straight facts don't work, I've got to improvise.
What am I to do when almost everyone resisted what was obvious to me - as a bright full moon in a clear dark sky - at the beginning of the thread that the Mandarins, the SLN and even citizens of the League would view Beowulf's actions as treasonous? Revisit the threads beginning where pages were wasted on something as simple as that. And it continues to occur. Even after . . .
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the author sent the cavalry my way bearing gifts of textev to that effect.
Hell, I even began talking in the third person. No one could understand that the League, Mandarins and SL citizens would be passionate about Beowulf's implied responsibilities to its founding.
Resistance of which I am still gob smacked. And pockets of resistance continues.
I only have one word if you think that I think the resistance against certain parties thinking it was treason wouldn't still be raging rapids-ly if not for the cavalry. SWAMPLAND.
