On June 6th around the Arbor Walk Pond halberdleaf rosemallow (Hibiscus laevis) flourished in several places. Below, look at the strangety of a bud that I found fallen onto a leaf. What had broken the bud off, and how it managed to stay balanced on the leaf, I have no idea.

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 Illogical sayings

Why does "with a grain of salt" mean 'skeptically'? I got to wondering about that the other day and looked it up. According to dictionary.com, "This expression is a translation of the Latin cum grano salis, which Pliny used in describing Pompey's discovery of an antidote for poison (to be taken with a grain of salt)." So the skepticism was originally about the claimed antidote for poison. Somehow that got dropped, and the skepticism transferred to the salt that had been a minor and basically irrelevant accompaniment.

Another adage that's not logical is "The proof is in the pudding." Why not "The proof is in the pastry" or "The proof is in the picnic"? They're equally alliterative and make equally little sense. Once again this is a case of something having gotten lost. The original notion was that "The proof of the pudding is in the tasting." The cook may have followed a supposedly good pudding recipe, and the resulting pudding may look appetizing, but till we taste it we don't really know if it came out well. The part about tasting the result got lost, and now we're left with a nonsensical saying about pudding.

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman