Idiomatic Incorporations
Reading chapter 12 in Crystal, I was intrigued by his discussion on how extracts from the King James’ version of the Bible have now become common expressions in Modern English. Specifically, it was really interesting to see how specific phrases became integrated into everyday language while others only have a place in biblical texts.
As Crystal puts it, “Not every biblical allusion can be allowed to count as a lexical unit within Standard English, of course. It must achieve some degree of linguistic autonomy; it must be capable of being meaningful outside of its original biblical context”(276). Like him, I began to speculate about what exactly it is about the phrases, which have now become so common place, that makes them survive in the realm of every day speech. Is there some sort of unifying factor? My initial thought was that the allusions, which have evolved into Standard English phrases, invoke a sense of universal wisdom which readers of the Bible found applicable to pass on in everyday conversation. Certainly the phrases “man shall not live by bread alone”, “turn the other cheek” and “no man can serve two masters” serve as sound advice. I can see them being passed on in spoken English through generations for solely that reason.
Yet what about “one pearl of great price,” “last shall be the first, and the first shall be the last” or whited sepulchre”? Â These phrases aren’t really words of wisdom but I feel they do have certain poetic air about them. Authors of the day or of future centuries have often been inspired to draw from the Bible. Thus, probably due to usage in popular literature these phrases have made their way into Standard English, similar to the way movie quotes have managed to become recognizable in every day conversation today.
Since I’m no expert on this subject, I’m interested in hearing what anyone else has to say on this matter. My reasons for this lexical occurrence are merely speculation. Does anyone have a more specific reason for how certain biblical phrases became so “popular”?Â
meghan wrote:
I may be totally off-base here, but I think that the fact that the most educated people among the populous were those educated in the church made Biblical phrases not only more prevalent, but a sign of knowledge. Religion was a large part of people’s lives back then, but most commoners certainly didn’t know how to read or decipher the Bible. Thus, if you knew the phrases of the Bible, you were indeed depicted as a learned person. It is also possible that this fact that most educated people were guided by the church caused many or most writers to inherently included what they knew from their learning in other aspects of their writing.
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 10:55 am ¶
Stephanie wrote:
My thoughts on that are somewhat related to Meghan’s, but go in a different direction. I agree that the Bible or phrases from it were probably a marker of knowledge, but also one that more and more people had as the different printings/translations became more widely used and available. Not everyone would have been able to read the Bible for themselves, but almost everyone would have heard those phrases–especially the ones with a more poetic flair–at church, in sermons, etc.
So I think the populace at large might have picked up these phrases because they knew, in some way, that people would “know what they meant” when they said or wrote them. The parts that are sage advice would’ve been lent more authority by the fact that they came from or echoed the Bible, and the others would call to mind the same images for a variety of people. Of course, I’m just speculating, but I think that might have been what happened.
Posted 02 Mar 2008 at 1:24 pm ¶
sean wrote:
We are lucky to have so many idiomatic expressions. We could face a dire linguistic situation as portrayed in this recent article.
Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 10:14 am ¶
Ye Olde Steve wrote:
I’d say it’s not just that Most educated people read the Bible, but rather that there was a large portion of the English Population that Only read the Bible. We haven’t really talked too much about the Puritans and the like, but after the separation from the Catholic church among a lot of the populace it was considered sinful to read anything other than the Bible. That combined with the (perhaps stereotypical) tendency for the overly zealous to constantly reproach one another with quotations from scripture makes it seem that idioms from the Bible make quite a lot of sense.
Posted 23 Mar 2008 at 1:30 pm ¶