Loaded language: The gun metaphors that pervade our everyday slang
By Landon Y. Jones, Published: April 18
Landon Y. Jones is the author of “William Clark and the Shaping of the West” and “Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation.”
Sometimes it’s the offhand remark that’s the most telling. Indeed, the way we Americans casually, often unthinkingly, incorporate gun metaphors into our everyday slang says a lot about how deeply embedded guns are in our culture and our politics, and how difficult it is to control or extract them. Consider this list, presented as bullet points — which are themselves so conventional, so central to the typography of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations, that you can forget what their shape represents.
● Bite the bullet: Meaning to power through something unpleasant, the term comes from the practice of providing wounded soldiers a bullet to clench their teeth on while they underwent surgery without anesthetic. British writer Rudyard Kipling is thought to have been the first to use the expression figuratively. His 1891 novel “The Light That Failed” includes this line: “Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think you’re afraid.” These days, people are more likely to bite the bullet if they have to accept an unpleasant truth. And politicians are often urged to bite the bullet and compromise — suggesting that coming together to pass legislation is as painful as amputation while fully sentient.
● Fizzle: In the late Middle Ages, “fizzle” was an onomatopoeic word used when someone surreptitiously passed gas. But its modern meaning is more closely associated with guns. For early muzzle-loading flintlock rifles, gunpowder was poured down the barrel, secured with a piece of cloth tamped into place by a ramrod and then ignited by a spark struck from the flint. If it misfired, you had a “fizzle.” So writing about “the great gun-control fizzle” after the Newtown shooting is more freighted than writing that a politician’s prospects have fizzled. See also: “flash in the pan” (when the gunpowder flares but the bullet fails to fire) and “blow your wad” (when you’ve forgotten to load shot before firing the gun, therefore wasting the “wad” of cloth; the phrase only later took on a sexual connotation).
(More here.)
Landon Y. Jones is the author of “William Clark and the Shaping of the West” and “Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation.”
Sometimes it’s the offhand remark that’s the most telling. Indeed, the way we Americans casually, often unthinkingly, incorporate gun metaphors into our everyday slang says a lot about how deeply embedded guns are in our culture and our politics, and how difficult it is to control or extract them. Consider this list, presented as bullet points — which are themselves so conventional, so central to the typography of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations, that you can forget what their shape represents.
● Bite the bullet: Meaning to power through something unpleasant, the term comes from the practice of providing wounded soldiers a bullet to clench their teeth on while they underwent surgery without anesthetic. British writer Rudyard Kipling is thought to have been the first to use the expression figuratively. His 1891 novel “The Light That Failed” includes this line: “Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think you’re afraid.” These days, people are more likely to bite the bullet if they have to accept an unpleasant truth. And politicians are often urged to bite the bullet and compromise — suggesting that coming together to pass legislation is as painful as amputation while fully sentient.
● Fizzle: In the late Middle Ages, “fizzle” was an onomatopoeic word used when someone surreptitiously passed gas. But its modern meaning is more closely associated with guns. For early muzzle-loading flintlock rifles, gunpowder was poured down the barrel, secured with a piece of cloth tamped into place by a ramrod and then ignited by a spark struck from the flint. If it misfired, you had a “fizzle.” So writing about “the great gun-control fizzle” after the Newtown shooting is more freighted than writing that a politician’s prospects have fizzled. See also: “flash in the pan” (when the gunpowder flares but the bullet fails to fire) and “blow your wad” (when you’ve forgotten to load shot before firing the gun, therefore wasting the “wad” of cloth; the phrase only later took on a sexual connotation).
(More here.)
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