"Endangered Phrases" is a catchy title for a book about intriguing idioms
dangerously close to extinction, as its subtitle indicates.
It's a tongue in cheek title, not for a minute suggesting that endangered
phrases are as serious an issue as endangered species. After all, unlike
extinct species, extinct idioms can always have life breathed back into them.
Most of "Endangered Phrases" consists of an alphabetical listing of phrases
that the author, Stephen D Price considers to be on their way out. A very brief
introduction does suggest some of the reasons for the threats to particular
phrases. These include political correctness, the changing age distribution
of the population and the influence of technology in generating new idioms.
This is the sort of book that can be used to determine your age. A baby
boomer might look at this book and be astonished to think that a fly in the
ointment or a social butterfly or a feather in your cap could be endangered
phrases. Ask a young person and they may well have no idea what the phrase
could possibly mean.
I did enjoy reading through the idioms, those that I knew and those that I
didn't know. After all, Stephen D Price does provide interesting definitions
and explanations. However, I felt that I could equally have enjoyed a
collection of more idioms, whether endangered, extinct or in plague proportions.
This book could really have provided much more value if it categorised the
so-called endangered phrases into the reason they were under threat. Sure, he
explained the inevitable demise of the idiom, Chinese fire drill as being the
result of a trend towards political correctness. But otherwise he seldom
provided the reason.
The book is written by an American and perhaps it's not fair for an
Australian to critique it, since some of the terms have simply not been part of
the Australian lingo. However, I was left wondering whether particular idioms I
didn't know had faded for one of the reasons he'd given, or whether it was
simply because they were American idioms. Some of the idioms that fell into
this category for me were:
Don't take any wooden nickel
Dollars to doughnuts
Tinhorn gamble
Got the dragon
There were plenty of phrases I did know. Maybe this reflects my age, but
for the life of me, I was surprised that some phrases were considered to be
endangered. For example, could I bet my bottom dollar that any Australian who
hadn't heard the following phrases was inevitably younger than me?:
Heebie jeebies
Make no bones about it
Monkey's uncle
Gild the lily
Three dog night
A lick and a promise
My overall conclusion was that "Endangered Phrases" raised more questions
than it answered, and that to really understand the demise of particular idioms,
I would need to go out and do further research on Price's list.
In short, it is not enough for Price to claim that an idiom is endangered
without any explanation. Not unless the author simply wants us to rush out and
create a save the endangered phrase movement.
Published by Skyhorse Publishing. 2011
ISBN13: 978-1-61608-247-5
ISBN10: 1-61608-247-X
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