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I despised it. Made it incredibly difficult to read as the desperate attempts at humour mangled the English language so much I had to read half the sentences tw
by drcongo 5y ago
I despised it. Made it incredibly difficult to read as the desperate attempts at humour mangled the English language so much I had to read half the sentences twice to understand what they meant.
> At which point the pilot beat feet away from the aircraft
Why were there so many feet near the aircraft that the pilot was having to beat them away? Whose feet were they? Were they still attached to the people whose feet they were? And if not, what on earth had happened?
- addingnumbers 5y ago"Beat feet" has been a widespread English idiom for retreat since the 1940's, still to this day published in print thousands of times every year.
- Reubachi 5y agobaffled that one can make the observation: "attempts at humor mangled the english language", and in the same observation not understand one of the most widely used idioms in the English speaking sphere.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoI'm curious - where are you from? I'm a thirty-something California native, I was able to piece together what the idiom meant after reading the sentence a few times, but I'd never come across it before in my life. I also thought the article's tone was bizarre, for what it's worth.
- drcongo 5y agoI was born and have lived in England for decades and I've never heard it or read it before ever. I would love to know where the parent is from that they consider it to be "one of the most widely used idioms in the English speaking sphere". How many times per day do they use it? What kind of hell do they live in that they would need to use that phrase so often?!
- jwmoz 5y agoWell I'm a 37 year old Brit and never heard that term fwiw.