READINGS IN LANGUAGE

Five ostensibly factual expressions we must take with a grain of salt

In “‘Once in a Blue Moon’ and Other Idioms That Don’t Make Scientific Sense,” a post in the May 22, 2013 issue of Smithsonian.com, Mohi Kumar points out that many popular idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms usually assumed to have scientific basis are actually misrepresentations of the ideas they are trying to express. She says that two of such obviously wrong expressions are “A watched pot never boils” and “The darkest hour is just before dawn.” She explains that the first can easily be debunked by putting a kettle of water over high heat and seeing the water boil without fail once its boiling point is reached, while the latter runs counter to the fact that well before the sun rises, the sky actually gets progressively lighter, with the darkest hour having occurred long before the break of dawn. Such expressions are therefore not scientific at all and, as such, should never be taken literally.

PHOTO BY FLICKR USER BILBORD99

On the other hand, Kumar lists and takes up five ostensibly factual expressions that, having less obvious scientific inaccuracies, are often accepted to be literally true when, in fact, they are far from being so. These are “Once in a blue moon,” “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “The fish rots from the head down,” “Hard as nails,” and “Diamonds are forever.” Kumar then proceeds to make a scientific disquisition on why these colorful but misleading expressions—to use two clichés in a row (mine, not Kumar’s)—aren’t the real McCoy and should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Read Mohi Kumar’s “‘Once in a Blue Moon’ and Other Idioms That Don’t Make Scientific Sense” in Smithsonian.com in the now!

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