Sayings – Author Sarah Angleton

I admit to being a little bit of a language snob. Of course I recognize that language evolves and a misspoken word today may be perfectly acceptable tomorrow, at least for some, but know that if you use a malapropism, I’ll probably judge you.

In case you are unfamiliar with the word malapropism, in lame man’s terms, it’s the mistaken replacement of a word with another that sounds similar. The term, derived from the French mal à propos, meaning inappropriate, got picked up in the English language because of playwright Richard Brinsely Sheridan. In his 1775 play The Rivals, a character named Mrs. Malaprop is notorious for muddling up her words.

One version of Mrs. Malaprop looking “as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile,” which is one of her delightful lines. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign University Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s not to say that Sheridan was the only, or even the first, writer to make use of such a character trait, but I suppose that’s a moo point. For all intensive purposes, that’s when the concept entered the English language where it’s been driving language snobs like me bonkers ever since.

I’ve been thinking about malapropisms a lot lately because the publication date of Paradise on the Pike, my new historical novel set in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, is drawing near and I have discovered that not everyone is familiar with the word “pike.”

If you happen to live in one of the handful of US states that contain a turnpike, you might be able to puzzle out that “turnpike” is another word for toll road and that “pike” is another word for a road. You might even be familiar with the phrase “coming down the pike,” meaning something is going to happen in the future. For example, I have a new novel coming down the pike.

If you don’t happen to live near a turnpike, then you might mistakenly believe the phrase is “coming down the pipe,” in which case, I’m probably judging you.

But this particular malapropism does make some logical sense because there is another phrase “in the pipeline” that also refers to something that is going to happen soon. I could, for example, tell you that I have a new novel in the pipeline. Conflating the two seems like a fairly innocuous mistake.

And of course you can go ahead and say whatever you like. It’s a doggy dog world and I don’t always get my way even if I do think malapropisms ought to be nipped in the butt whenever possible. Really, I could care less. Except that the expression, “coming down the pike,” may actually have its roots in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis in which a mile long stretch of road along the north side of the fairgrounds that formed the main entertainment section of the fair was referred to as “the Pike.”

A new historical mystery coming down the pike on April 18, 2024.

The Pike contained all manner of concessions including battle reenactments, rides, a wax museum, fashion demonstrations, mock-ups of exotic locales, dancers, musicians, and animal shows. It was also the site of daily parades, leading to much excitement as people crowded around to catch a glimpse of what wondrous things might be coming down the Pike.

And so, the cover of my newest novel in the pipeline that will be coming down the pike on the 18th of April, just in time to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the 1904 World’s Fair, features a picture looking down the historical Pike. I hope you’ll forgive me for stringing out the cover reveal and keeping you on tender hooks for a few weeks. I also hope you’ll really enjoy the book when it’s finally here. And in the meantime, language snobbery aside, I hope you’ll love the book by its cover.

Finally it’s March. I don’t know about you, but by the time we reach this point in the year, I usually feel pretty chewed up by winter. As I age, too, I find it harder and harder to endure the cold, dark months between Christmas and March. Yes, I do realize there are only two. And that one of them is short. That doesn’t make me dislike them any less.

Truthfully, though, I’m not that big a fan of March either, because in my part of the world, it behaves a little bit like a toddler. One moment it’s the sweetest: all babbling brooks and birdsong, blowing sunshine kisses. The next minute the sky starts grumbling, the temperature drops thirty degrees and before you know it every tiny hint of a bud is covered in two inches of full on tantrum ice.

starlion — The saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” may be astrological in origin. Or maybe some Sumerian blogger was just getting poetic. By John Hevelius 1690, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But even though I think my analogy is pretty spot on and should probably become a thing, no one has ever said March is basically a toddler. Or if they did, no one ever repeated it, which is a shame. No, instead it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

That sort of works, too. Even though lions take a lot of naps and from a distance can resemble lazy old housecats on bad hair days, they also have scary teeth, loud roars, and are generally pretty willing to chew you up if given the chance. And lambs? Well, they’re just cute and stupid, the kind of animal you don’t have to give a lot of thought to except to say, “Awww.”

lamb — Awww. Photo courtesy of cathy0952, via Pixabay.

I suppose I can get behind the adage since people have evidently been using it for so long. According to this article in The Paris Review, the earliest known written reference to the saying is found in a book published in 1732 called Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British by Thomas Fuller. So then the saying was first used either in the early 18th century or in Ancient Mesopotamia or possibly somewhere in between, which narrows it down quite a bit.

Because I so painstakingly dedicate myself to thorough-ish research on this blog, I did, of course, take the time to search through the book, just to make sure the phrase was in there. Or at least that’s what I meant to do. Fuller includes thousands of sayings. Some of them we still use today. Many of them I probably heard my grandma say once or twice. Others strike this modern reader as just plain silly. I admit, I got a little lost.

Some of my favorites:

What exactly am I supposed to do with this mustard? photo credit: Marthinshl Heinz Mustard Heinz Mustard Photography IPhoneography Product Photography via photopin (license)

“An apple may be better given than eaten.”

“He who is born a fool, is never cured.”

“If an ass goes traveling, he’ll not come home a horse.”

“If the old dog barks, he gives counsel.”

“Tailors and writers must mind the fashion.”

“After meat, mustard.”

I never did find a reference to March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, but it’s probably there. I also didn’t find any sayings suggesting that “March is basically a toddler,” so I think I may have coined it. And really, some years, March starts out a little more lamb-like and some years the nasty cold rages right into April, behaving just like a toddler that refused to take his afternoon nap. It’s a thing.