As we bid farewell to the holiday season (whatever you may celebrate), here are a few final presents to amuse you. Share these with your children or grandchildren and marvel at how illogical (and fun!) English can be.
• Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
• If a tin horn is made of tin, and a brass horn is made of brass, what’s a fog horn made of?
• Why is something sent on a ship called cargo, but something sent in a car called a shipment? And why is one thing sent on and another sent in?
• Why is it a pair of pants, or a pair of glasses, of a TV set, when there’s only one of it?
• How can you both fill out and fill in a form?
• If a set of stairs is called a staircase, why is a set of steps not called a stepcase? And is there a difference between stairs and steps? While we’re at it, why is a set of stairs between floors called a flight?
• If it makes sense that a person who handles cash is a cashier, why is a person who handles your investments called abroke r?
• When you pack, why do you put your suits in a garment bag, but your garmentsin asuit case?
• Why do people recite their lines in a play, but play at a recital?
• How can things burn up and burn down?
• Why is it that your feet smell but your nose runs?
• Why do you have to turn off an alarm that already went off?
• How come awise man is respected but a wise guy is not?
• How can a chance be both fat and slim?
• How can you overlook something you’re supposed to oversee?
• If musicians have a practice to get better, why do doctors have a practice?
• Why are they called apartments when they’re all together?
• Why does night fall, but day breaks?
• Why do we say uncle when we’ve had enough? (I think I heard a few of those …)
Sorry to be a spoilsport, but at least some of these examples are entirely logical. 1) Pair of pants and pair of glasses: The expressions incorporate the fact that pants have two legs and glasses have two lenses. 2) Staircase: Stairs are often built inside an enclosing structure that we properly call a staircase. Steps, on the other hand -- such as your front steps -- usually are not encased. So we don't talk about "stepcases." 3) Burn up and burn down: Two different logics are at work here. When a house burns, for instance, some of its elements literally go up in smoke. So it burns up. But if a house burns completely, at the end of the process it's in ruins on the ground. So it burns down, too. 4) Apartments: What makes them apartments (from the Latin for "divided" or "split up") is that their individual areas are separated from each other by walls. The governing idea of the word is a large space divided into smaller living spaces, not a bunch of habitations stacked end to end, or above and below. 5) I could go on, but I won't.
#1 Posted by Dave Clemens, CJR on Fri 11 Jan 2013 at 08:19 AM