But this is hotly opposed by the Meenas who already have the tag and form the bigger group.  The Chief Minister is, in the words of a reader (The Hindu, Letters,) caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.

I wonder how many younger readers of today would make any sense of this phrase. Ulysses, sailing back from home after the Trojan War, encounters many difficult situations (described at length in the Odyssey). At one point he has to cross a  strait where, on one side there is Scylla, a female sea monster who would devour anyone who passed by her monstrous cave  and on the other side is a dangerous whirlpool named  Charybdis.  So no matter on which side he tries to pass through the strait he is in great danger..

The same idea is captured by the more modern phrase between the devil and the deep sea; and by the still more modern American expression between a rock and a hard place.

I have argued elsewhere for retaining expressions from classical mythology (see my Structure, Style, and Usage). But it would seem, as less and less time is given to the study of classical history and mythology, phrases like the one we are now considering become less and less intelligible. And even those who use them go wrong.  It is Scylla, not the Scylla.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic. The expressions will survive and people will continue to use them, even meaningfully, but with no idea of how the expressions came to have such meanings; i.e. without any awareness of the stories behind them. Many, as a matter of fact, use the phrase Hobson’s choice correctly as meaning ‘no choice at all’ without knowing that Hobson was a man in Cambridge, England, who let his horses on hire. But the customer had to take the horse nearest the door, or else—no horse at all. 

Perhaps this is not so bad after all.  How many of us have any idea of the etymology of the words we use? The stories behind the expressions we are now looking at correspond, in a sense, to the etymology of words.  So why bother abut the ancient stories behind these phrases if we can use them correctly?

I am not sure the two cases are identical.  With words the root meanings are often  obscured, altered down the centuries. The meaning of a word today may have moved far away from the root meaning (muscle derives from the Latin mus meaning   ‘mouse’.  When you flex your arm the bulge appears like a small mouse). But with expressions like Scylla and Charybdis or hoist with his own petard, it is not so. The stories actually enhance one’s appreciation of these meanings.
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Readers are well aware of the tendency in American English to omit the preposition in certain phrases where British English normally has it. The bird flew out the window. Safire, who writes the column ‘On language’ in The New York Times weekly magazine, gave this tendency a further extension when he wrote: ‘I wrote the British Museum’ meaning ‘I wrote to the British Museum (now the British National Library). This caused a furore. Readers wrote to Safire, asking sarcastically: ‘Sir, we know you have written a lot of books.  But did you write the whole of the British Museum?’

Now it seems the opposite tendency is setting in: to use a preposition where, normally, none is needed.  Mark Twain has:  considerable of a jolt (1875) but this can hardly be taken as justifying such usages now.

The point is: an intrusive of seems to be appearing before various adjectives: not that big of a meal; that short of a skirt; that good of a day (Safire: “Of late, a virus called ‘of’”) A possible explanation of such usages is that it is modelled on such acceptable phrases as not much of a choice; a bit of a problem, etc.

A more justifiable explanation would be: These constructions derive from such structures as: of a skirt, I hadn’t seen any thing that short; of a meal, I hadn’t seen anything that big.

The contracted forms should’ve (should have), could’ve (could have) can end up, in careless, sloppy speech as should of, could of. So there seems to be more than one route for entering this ungrammatical territory. But no matter where you encounter it, in speech or print, it is ungrammatical and should be avoided.

The writer can be contacted at ksyadurajan@yahoo.com