昔日文章

When you hear the expression “at sixes and sevens”, you might think that it means “six o’clock and seven o’clock”. To have a better idea, let us look at the following example:  Mum was angry because the bedroom was left at sixes and sevens.  The idiom in the above example means “in confusion or disorder”. Can you think of a Chinese expression which carries a similar meaning but uses the numbers “seven” and “eight”? The answer is 「亂七八糟」, which means “messy”.  The idiom is more common in British English than in American English. The numbers in the idiom were originally “cinque and sice” （Old French for “five and six”） and came from a complicated dice game called “Hazard” from the Middle Ages（中世紀）. In this game, anyone who bet on five and six, the most risky numbers, was thought to be unwise and confused. Over time, English-speaking players misheard or changed “cinque and sice” into “six and seven”.  In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer, also known as the Father of English Literature （英國文學之父）, used an expression “to set the world on six and seven” in one of his poems. In this context, the expression means “to risk the world”.  The expression developed the meaning of “in confusion” in the 16th century. William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, used a similar phrase in the play called “Richard II”（《李察二世》）,  “…, and everything is left at six and seven.”  It took nearly 200 years for the expression to take the plural forms, as mentioned in Francis Grose, a British lexicographer, in his “A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” （《經典粗話辭典》）in 1785:  Left at sixes and sevens: i.e. in confusion; commonly said of a room where the furniture, etc. is scattered about; or of a business left unsettled.  Today, a less common meaning of the idiom is “in dispute”. For example:  The football team lost the match because the players were always at sixes and sevens with each other.    I hope that after reading this article, you have a better idea of the idiom and your mind is not at sixes and sevens. 

Doctors always advise us to take less salt if we want to have a healthy lifestyle. In the following sentence, what is the manager’s opinion of the new worker?  The manager thinks that the new worker is worth his salt.  The manager actually thinks that the new worker is good at his job. You might have thought the opposite because salt is cheap and may lead to health problems, including high blood pressure.  Why does the idiom “worth one’s salt” mean “competent and worth one’s salary”? Salt was valuable in the past, and was sometimes called “white gold”. Some countries even fought over salt in ancient times. It has been used as food seasoning and meat preservative for thousands of years.  Historians think that there is a link between salary and salt. During the Roman Empire（羅馬帝國）, soldiers received salt as part of their pay or some special money（or “salarium”） to buy their own salt. The English word “salary” comes from the Latin “salarium”. Latin（拉丁文） was spoken throughout the Roman Empire. A lot of English words come from Latin.  The idiom “worth one’s salt” was used as early as 1805 when Philip Beaver, an officer of the British Royal Navy（英國皇家海軍）, wrote in a report of an expedition entitled “The African Memoranda” （《非洲摘記》）:  “Hayles has been my most useful man, but of late not worth his salt.”  In 1830, Robert Louis Stevenson, a famous Scottish （蘇格蘭）author, also used this idiom in his classic adventure novel, “Treasure Island”（《金銀島》）:  “… our new hand was worth his salt.”（我們的新工人工作稱職。）  The expression also means that “someone deserves respect”, as Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States（美國總統）, said in early 20th century:  “No man is worth his salt（應受尊敬）who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.”    Let us remember that no one is worthless if he or she is worth his or her salt. 

One day your class teacher posted a picture of a cat with the following slogan on the classroom notice board:  Don’t be a copycat!  What does this mean, “don’t copy a cat” or “don’t let a cat copy you”? By using the idiom “copycat”, your class teacher wants to remind all of you not to copy each other’s work and to have your own ideas or what we call “originality”. So do not call a friend a copycat（專門抄襲他人功課的學生）. Otherwise you will lose his or her friendship.  Perhaps you might wonder why we say “copycat” but not “copydog”. The word may come from the habits of kittens learning by copying the behaviour of their own mother. Recently, a study from the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour（《獸醫學行為學報》）showed that cats adapt to and even copy the behaviour of their owners. Can you believe that?  The word can also be written as “copy cat” or “copy-cat”. It has been in use since the 19th century. An American female writer, Constance Cary Harrison, is said to have first used the word “copy cat” in her book:  Our boys say you are a copy cat, if you write in anything that’s been already printed.  A similar expression which uses another kind of animals is “monkey see, monkey do”. As the expression literally means, it also refers to someone who imitates the behaviour of others.  Over the last 50 years, the term “copycat crime”（模仿犯罪）has become widely used in the media to describe a criminal activity done by someone who is copying a previous crime. For example:  The young man was sentenced to jail for robbing a jewellery shop. His behaviour was a copycat crime imitating other similar robberies from the internet.  A book entitled “The Copycat Effect” （模仿效應）, written by Loren Coleman, further describes the effect that the media has on crimes and suggests ways for the media to avoid the copycat effect. For example, the media must not provide details of the criminal activities.    While cats are lovely pets for human beings nowadays, they were associated with evil and mischief in ancient times. Thus, it is not surprising that the idiom “copycat” carries a negative meaning. 

Do you love reading books? If you do, you may be called a “bookworm”. The idiom “bookworm”（極愛讀書的人）means a person who is devoted to reading or studying. For example:  He is such a bookworm! He can read at least ten books a week.  Where does this idiom come from? Is there an insect which is really called “bookworm”? In fact, the word “bookworms”（書蟲）also refers to any small bugs which live in and eat books, such as booklice and silverfish. Bookworms normally feed on the glue and paste of the spine and covers of bindings. Thus, it is used as a metaphor to describe a person who has a passion of devouring books like those little worms eating them.  It is not known who first used the word “bookwor m ” t o d e s c r i b e a n e x t remely enthusiastic reader. Some dictionaries said that as early as the first century AD, Philippus of Thessalonica in ancient Greece compared the grammarians of that time to bookworms.  S o m e t i m e s w e m i g h t u s e t h e w o rd “bookworm”（書呆子）in a negative way to describe a person who is excessively fond of reading that they are not sociable and do not mix well with other people.  As an American author, David L. Harrison, said in the following poem, books provide food for thought. And a lot of us would be happy to be called “a bookworm”.  Books to us are food for thought.  Bookworms nibble what they should not.  But though we think the bookworm’s rude,    books to him are thoughts for food.