CrabbyAmerikan
New member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
Greetings!-
My wife thinks I think too much, and she may well be right. Nevertheless, I've been wondering lately about the unique idioms and such associated with firearms, and the origins of this stuff. Things like 'open fire', and the more abstract ones. We have so bloody many of these things in English, and sometimes one, or a group of them, seems to get stuck in the 'ol noggin, yes?
So, I wonder if someone might be able to point me to where someone's gone into these things.
Then too, I wonder why a man with a gun is a gunman, but if he has a bat he's not frequently referred to as a batman, or one with a knife a knifeman? Why so bloody many times shots 'ring out'. Sometimes I just want to throttle the next person whose shots ring out. Grrr.
I hope this is the proper place for the ramblings of an old(er) crab, but one has to start someplace, yes?
Peace.
-CrabbyAmerikan
My wife thinks I think too much, and she may well be right. Nevertheless, I've been wondering lately about the unique idioms and such associated with firearms, and the origins of this stuff. Things like 'open fire', and the more abstract ones. We have so bloody many of these things in English, and sometimes one, or a group of them, seems to get stuck in the 'ol noggin, yes?
So, I wonder if someone might be able to point me to where someone's gone into these things.
Then too, I wonder why a man with a gun is a gunman, but if he has a bat he's not frequently referred to as a batman, or one with a knife a knifeman? Why so bloody many times shots 'ring out'. Sometimes I just want to throttle the next person whose shots ring out. Grrr.
I hope this is the proper place for the ramblings of an old(er) crab, but one has to start someplace, yes?
Peace.
-CrabbyAmerikan