conuly

And barely made enough to cover the ONE book I bought. It's a scam! You go to the store, sell your books, they give you money, you enter the store, pick out your book(s), and the money goes back in the cashbox! They don't even let you use B&N discount cards, which sucks when the book in question is only available at BC. So you get poor, and they're making money hand over fist.

Hm. Hand over fist. Weird expression. I wonder what it means. (Notice there is a period at the end of the sentence, as I am not asking a question, merely stating an emotion.) Of course, I know what it means, I just used it after all, what I mean is "I wonder why it means what it means, and I'm far too lazy to look it up right now".

Still, it makes more sense than "backwards" expressions, or expressions that have become such cliches that any meaning was lost. For example, consider "he was head over heels in love". That doesn't make ANY sense! You're always head over heels, except when you slouch, and then you're head over toes. The original, and logically correct form is "he was heels over head in love". This makes sense - somebody was so much in love that they were completely mixed up. Or "you want to have your cake and eat it too". Well, yeah. In order to eat my cake I first must have it. The earlier form runs something like "you want to eat your cake and then still have it", which makes sense. You can't keep something you've eaten. And then there are expressions which aren't backwards, merely eroded. "The proof is in the pudding." Proof of what, exactly? Where does pudding come into it, except in strange episodes of Monk? Nowhere, unless you say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. This makes sense, because it says exactly what it means - you can tell how good something is by trying it out, you don't need other people to tell you how good it is.

*sighs* Language evolution is, generally, a good thing, but sometimes it just sucks.