You must have heard of the young farmer who got into trouble because he only knew how to sow wild oats. And of the cashier in a tattered coat who, when caught stealing from the till, apologetically said: ‘I was only lining my pockets.’
These are cases where an idiom (which is also interpretable in a literal sense) is used to explain a tricky situation. Lining the pockets has a physical sense which a tailor can explain. In the context of the tattered coat it is possible the fellow was lining his pockets. But the phrase has another, idiomatic sense. The cashier was caught (and let us hope suitably punished) under this idiomatic sense.
The unfortunate man who, pressed with creditors and problems on all sides hanged himself, actually showed that when everyone forsakes you, there is One who doesn’t. He never lets you down.
The examples of a particular type of wit and humour given above are all taken from that inveterate and irrepressible humourist (and cynic) Kay S Wye, whose Maxims and Observations now enliven an otherwise forbidding column on grammar and usage. The examples are from his two books It Couldn’t be Verse or Worse Either! And More Verse but Much Worse! (Writers Workshop, Calcutta).
My point in raking up these antiquities now is to draw attention to a type of humour not generally recognised or discussed. But literature — at least the byways of literature — is replete with songs and verses exploiting this technique. The most remarkable poem of this kind is to be found in one of the Oxford collections of English verse. The poem is all about a fellow whose breeches had suffered a breach and the rust had invested his vest. Unemployed and looking for an opening, he falls into a manhole and dies. The coroner who held the inquest pronounces that he drowned because he could not hold his head above water.
My mind went back to these old favourites of mine when, a couple of days ago, I heard the Times Now anchor say that, in a particular case, the explanation offered by the authorities did not wash. Obviously it did not hold water. Here we have an idiom offered as an explanation for what is signified by the other idiom when, in fact both mean the same. They are synonymous. It doesn’t wash. It doesn’t hold water. It doesn’t stand scrutiny.
Finally with petrol selling at Rs. 50 a litre, driving a car is a pain in the neck as you have to pay through the nose.
The examples cited above are not all alike though they may look so. What is common to all of them is a play on idioms and they are all presented as explaining a situation. It doesn’t wash because it doesn’t hold water is a tautology. But there is a hint of explaining why something doesn’t wash (literal sense) because it doesn’t hold water. ‘The young farmer who got into trouble’ plays on the idiomatic and literal meanings of sowing wild oats.
In the case of the unfortunate young man who fell into a manhole the idiom he could not hold his head above water gives a plausible reason but sounds like a tautology. And in the sentence about petrol prices, the anatomical relation between neck and nose has been exploited while giving a real reason for the pain.
There is another way of explaining events. This time we turn to Goldsmith a past master in the handling of words. Of a certain person he says:
The naked every day he clad, whenever he put on his clothes. What an exemplar of Christian virtues! And another lady, no ordinary woman this, was such that Kings themselves walked behind, whenever she went before. (Not an exact quotation,)
The sort of writing discussed above is not just for literary amusement. It has a very practical (and pecuniary) application. It can make for a striking advertisement copy. I will not offer any specimen (by way of illustration) for obvious reasons!
You must have heard of the young farmer who got into trouble because he only knew how to sow wild oats. And of the cashier in a tattered coat who, when caught stealing from the till, apologetically said: ‘I was only lining my pockets.’
