An idiot with idioms: a Zoom self-portrait

There is a certain cadence to quarantine that blends the personal and the professional. It was Monday. Now it’s Thursday. I haven’t gone outside. The same routine every day. It’s automatic.

So naturally, when coworkers on the afternoon Zoom call ask how my day is going (because they are kind and courteous, and even with virtual meetings, small talk is part of the standard decorum¹), I reply with, “great, feels like Groundhog Day!”

(Now to be fair, this isn’t as bad as “Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking, just a moment!” but it sure can feel that way)

Yet, the funny² thing is I haven’t seen Groundhog Day. I know the premise — Bill Murray, Punxsutawney, a groundhog. Lather, rinse, repeat. There is probably some hilarity in blindly repeating something that is in itself repetitive, but it eludes me.

So, what’s the point? Good question.

In the hamster wheel of Zoom calls that defines my life right now, I find myself either parroting or listening to the same set of idioms. And while the laundry list of jargon is omnipresent in a corporate environment, there is something about working remotely that makes it more noticeable.

The thing is, these references and idioms permeate all of our lives. One does not need to be Wittgenstein incarnate to notice the importance of language.

Yet, before I get too far over my skis and make this little rant more than it is, below are a few of my favorite idioms form the past few weeks and their etymologies. For some reason, the repetition of these over videoconference are interestingly hilarious or hilariously interesting to me.³

1. Cat’s out of the bag came from one of two places. The first was the practice of savvy merchants swapping piglets (which were for some reason sold in bags?) for cats in livestock markets, duping unsuspected customers who would carry the sack home only to find that dinner had claws and an attitude.⁴ The other possible origin refers to a cat-o-nine tails, a whip used on sailors that had to be kept in a bag to make sure the leather didn’t deteriorate. The second is not as surprising? So, I’ll go with the first.
2. Beyond the pale is a bit less exciting. A pale was, apparently, a pointed stick. String a couple these together 500 years ago and you had a fence (also referred to as a pale, go figure). So heading out beyond the pale was outside of the bounds of what one would find acceptable or safe. Okay, got it.
3. Toe the line (which for the longest time I thought was “tow” the line) apparently comes from the British Army and officers calling recruits to form ranks. In my mind, calling on someone to tow a line — aka shut up and do the work that you are told — seems a bit more apt, but whatever.
4. Best of both worlds — This one is fairly obvious. We live. We die. It is easy to think of this divide as a separation between two worlds. If you have the best of both, you live a good life and then reap the benefits of the afterlife as well. Pretty neat.
5. Jump on the bandwagon — Fairly recent, the bandwagon refers to the wagons that would go ahead of big events (parades, political rallies). So, if you jumped on the bandwagon, you were looking to go where the crowd was going and have a good time. And now it is purely figurative, as in “I jumped on the bandwagon and agreed to write every day for 30 days!”⁵

In summary, the habitual phrases we use are interesting to think more about. And, on a more immediate note for the next Zoom call: quarantine comes from the Venetian practice in the times of the Plague of keeping ships away from port for forty (quaranta) days. Talk about groundhog day.

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[1] On the bright side, the references to the weather are noticeably slim. It’s cloudy with a side of isolation for everyone in quarantine.

[2]Yes, limiting my commentary on my Zoom etiquette to only one “funny” thing.

[3] I mean, it’s day three of 30 days of writing, if I can’t rely on the trusty internet list to get me through this, I don’t know what will.

[4] Meow, that would be a surprise! Sorry, but who are you kitten, You’re reading footnotes on a Medium post, what do you expect? *Sigh*

[5] So now you might ask, did I write this post solely to get to that sentence. And my answer would be either “the cat’s out of the bag” or “that question is beyond the pale.”