Category Archives: apothegm

Apothegm (a’-po-th-e-gem): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, gnome, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

I looked out the window and it was snowing like holy hell. It hadn’t snowed like this since 1989 when everything went to hell. They closed the air conditioner plant and moved it to Mexico. Ever since then I’ve been making do with odd jobs, some more odd than others. I say “Life isn’t a bowl of cherries” for me, it’s a bowl of shit.

I looked out the window and the thermometer said 17. Then I noticed there were four sticks sticking out of the snow that looked like were furry! Oh my God, it was my dog President’s legs! I thought, “He’s probably dead, I’ll just leave him there until spring.” Then, one of his feet twitched. I put on my boots and ran out in the yard in my pajamas to retrieve President. I stuck my hands under his back and picked him up like a human fork lift. He made some strange noise—he was trying to bark but his jaws were frozen shut. What had happened was my fault. I was drinking scotch and looking at “Reels” on Facebook. I had my earbuds in, so I did not hear him barking and whining at the screen porch door. I had forgotten he was outside. I went to bed.

I got my wife’s blow dryer to heat him up. First, I got his jaws working again, then I warmed his torso, sweeping hot blasts of air up and down his sides. When he was warm and dry, I wrapped him in a blanket and put him down by a heating duct.

I took him to the vet as soon as I got dressed. Everything was ok, but his tail had gotten frost bitten and needed to be amputated. President’s tail was his proudest feature. It was a fur flag that he proudly waved. When he wagged it, it was like he was writing a love song in the air. It was moving. It was majestic. It was President.

So, I had an uncle who is a cabinet maker. We commissioned him to make President a prosthetic tail. He took an extra long silicone adult toy, and glued specially dyed rabbit fur to it. He modified the toy’s harness so it cold be strapped on President.

President loves his strap-on tail. When he shakes his butt back and forth, his wagging tail sounds like a whip cutting the air.

All I can say is “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Apothegm (a’-po-th-e-gem): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, gnome, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“If you can’t cut the mustard, put the baloney away.” Anon

This is one of my favorite sayings. It originated in Germany where mustard and baloney have deep cultural significance. Although “put the baloney away” can have a bawdy meaning for a German, it is usually read as social commentary on bragging, along the lines of the English saying “Put up or shut up.” Or, “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

Sayings, of course, have cultural roots. Like the Japanese: “Wake up and smell the sushi.” Or the French: “Don’t stack your Macaroons.” Or the English: “If the bloody tea’s hot, sip it.” Or Russia: “Don’t marry a nesting doll.” Or Iceland: “If it looks like Northern Lights, it is.” Or the Dutch: “You tolerate it, it tolerates you.”

In most cases, sayings are freighted with deep, metaphoric meaning. Let’s have a look at one of the most vexing and important sayings in Western thought: “A stitch in time saves nine.” At some point in history, the various nuances of “stitch” were more readily discerned. Probably, the primary referent for “stitch” when the saying was coined was sewing. In contemporary discourse, it can refer to the pain you get in your side from jogging, or it can mean being under the spell of humor, as “I was in stitches,”

So, we have established that “stitch” refers to sewing. But at this point we fall into a hermeneutic abyss with the introduction of “time.” What is a “stitch in time?” The answer may stretch from Einstein to “Back to the Future.” But we see by what follows—the stitch in time “saves nine [stitches]”. So, the “stitch in time” may refer to slowing sewing so you make fewer errors that you have to go back and redo—the “nine” saved from haste. Now we see the intertextuality of cultural truths: “Haste makes waste” is a Canadian version of “stitch in nine.” It can be recognized as the Canadian version because it has a polite, yet blunt, tenor.

So, as I.A. Richards, the mountain climbing philosopher of language said: “Say it don’t spray it!” Or Nietzsche: “In the valley of the used cars, low mileage is king.” Sayings are grist for our learning mill. Whenever we use a saying, we punctuate the moment with something that makes us look smarter than we will ever be.

We stand on the shoulders of NBA Centers..

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.