The popular culture has always had an uncanny ability to misuse, misinterpret, misrepresent, and misquote. Its adherents believe that Columbus discovered America and George Washington had wooden teeth and dog saliva cleanses flesh wounds.<\/p>\n
The other day I heard a goofy radio guy say, \u201cTill death do we part.\u201d He thought \u201cdo us<\/em> part\u201d was ungrammatical. (He was wrong: it\u2019s not we<\/em> who are doing the parting. The line means \u201cuntil death parts\u00a0us.<\/em>\u201d)<\/p>\n Here are some other familiar sayings that have run into a little turbulence along the way \u2026<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cWater, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink<\/strong>.\u201d<\/strong> The words \u201cand not a\u201d can\u2019t be found in the famous couplet from Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s epic poem \u201cThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner\u201d (1798). Here is how Coleridge wrote it: \u201cWater, water, everywhere, \/ Nor any drop to drink.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cA little knowledge is a dangerous thing<\/strong>.\u201d<\/strong> There are several memorable lines from Alexander Pope\u2019s 1711 poem \u201cAn Essay on Criticism.\u201d This is almost one of them. But Pope wrote that \u201ca little learning\u201d is a dangerous thing. Knowledge <\/em>and learning<\/em> are hardly synonyms.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cGild the lily\u201d<\/strong> is supposedly from Shakespeare\u2019s The Life and Death of King John<\/em>. The correct quotation is, \u201cTo gild refined gold, to paint the lily.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cCome up and see me some time\u201d<\/strong> was actress Mae West\u2019s signature line, but the bodacious blonde didn\u2019t say it. In She Done Him Wrong<\/em> (1933), Ms. West says to Cary Grant, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you come up some time and see me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cPlay it again, Sam<\/strong>.\u201d<\/strong> That line might put a lump in your throat if you\u2019ve ever seen the 1942 movie\u00a0Casablanca<\/em>. But it\u2019s nowhere to be found in that great film. What Ingrid Bergman says is, \u201cPlay it once, Sam. For old times\u2019 sake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cElementary, my dear Watson.\u201d<\/strong> Everyone knows this patronizing utterance by Sherlock Holmes to his overmatched colleague Dr. Watson, but the line appears nowhere in any of the books and tales by Holmes\u2019s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I\u2019m told it comes from the 1929 film The Return of Sherlock Holmes<\/em>. Watson says, \u201cAmazing, Holmes.\u201d Holmes replies, \u201cElementary, my dear Watson, elementary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cBeam me up, Scotty\u201d<\/strong> was never said by William Shatner\u2019s Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek<\/em> TV series.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cMusic hath charms to soothe the savage beast.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>This is a misquotation from William Congreve\u2019s play\u00a0The Morning Bride<\/em>. Congreve (1670-1729) wrote \u201csavage breast<\/em>,\u201d not \u201cbeast.\u201d I\u2019m guessing the error can be attributed in part to good old American prudery, as demonstrated by this passage from a recent newspaper column: \u201cHe actually wrote \u2018the savage breast.\u2019 But this being a family newspaper, we went with the popular misquote.\u201d Very good, sir. And\u00a0tonight\u2019s<\/span><\/span> special is mesquite-grilled chicken chest.<\/p>\n \u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The popular culture has always had an uncanny ability to misuse, misinterpret, misrepresent, and misquote. Its adherents believe that Columbus discovered America and George Washington had wooden teeth and dog saliva cleanses flesh wounds. The other day I heard a goofy radio guy say, \u201cTill death do we part.\u201d He thought \u201cdo us part\u201d was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-idioms"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}