By Segun Omolayo

Idioms are special properties because they are a strong element in the characteristics that define the essence, spirit and soul of a language.

They are also part of the uniqueness of any language, with their assigned meanings and usages. Any surprise, therefore, that tampering with them is forbidden? You alter them at the risk of distorting part of the soul of a whole language, violating age-long usages, confounding meanings, misleading people, and what is most painful, propagating and perpetuating errors, which in time attain undue orthodoxy, relegating the truth into “clumsy truth” (apology to Brian Browne, one of The Nation newspaper’s columnists – my private tutors them all!). We must continue to shrink the ballooning tribe of error perpetuators. So, the conversation on idioms continues.

All manner of

Handling simple-looking idioms like this demands extra care, so as not to damage anything inadvertently but ignorantly. The reason is, these are idioms where removing a letter or transposing any element can change the nature and meaning as well as the application of the expression in question. Such extra care has apparently not been taken in constructing the sentence below:

Many a columnist lives to echo the cynicism and intolerable disloyalty of all manners of readership.

The problem here is about adding one letter to the word in the genuine idiom, namely: all manner of. In other words, it is incorrect to say all manners of anything. All manners of is unacceptable, because it is corrupted.

“Pop” Errors adds: ‘The difference between right (all manner of) and wrong (all manners of) is so flimsy that we just must learn the idiom by heart. The full idiom is: all manner of somebody or something, meaning “many different types of people or things.”‘ For clarity, we must display the correction, viz:

Many a columnist lives to echo the cynicism and intolerable disloyalty of all manner of readership.

Birds of a feather

Perhaps the most significant puzzle about this idiom, like almost all others, is that they are too familiar, yet so often taken for granted and abused. Concerning birds of a feather specifically, this columnist has corrected the incorrect use in tens and tens of texts he has edited, but his curiosity is that the affected writers have kept coming back with the corrections unheeded.

Apparently, such matters do not matter to them, and they therefore learn nothing from the interventions, even as they are always happy with the refinement lent their work. We will therefore continue to highlight and discuss these matters taken for granted so often, in the hope that someone will heed our preachments someday and avoid mistakes such as in:

His long tenure I often confused with the 40-year dictatorship of the late Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, but they are birds of the same feather in terms of despotism and disgraceful exit.

The error here is birds of the same feather, which is a twisted version of birds of a feather, the correct form of the idiom. Used to refer to “people who are similar in character,” the statement should run thus:

His long tenure I often confused with the 40-year dictatorship of the late Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, but they are birds of a feather in terms of despotism and disgraceful exit.

Even if the correct version sounds clumsy to you, kindly note that it is the acceptable form. And remember, students and all else are expected to use idioms in their correct forms, no matter how clumsy-sounding.

So, be mindful that a student preparing for exams might read you just before admittance into the hall, and viola, there is what he has just learnt from you staring him in the face in his question paper. He will thank you, if what he got from you helps him pass, but regret reading you if you help him fail.

Cog in the machine/wheel

You must have encountered statements like “He is a cog in the wheel of progress” and “His party is the cog in the wheel of the development of the country.” The use of cog in these is as wrong and misleading as in the following sentence:

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When they were alive, the ambitions of the likes of Awolowo and Azikiwe were considerable cogs that made any talk of cooperation between the political parties they led little more than a pipe dream.

Our writers’ companion, “Pop” Errors, will lend us its discussion of the problem posed by the wrong use of cog in the above statement. It says:

‘The use of cogs to denote obstacle in this statement is obviously an adaptation of the English idiom a cog in the machine/wheel. But it is a spectacular misuse of the idiom, and this is not peculiar to any particular writer; yet, the idiom has nothing to do with obstacles.

The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms explains the meaning as follows: “One part of a large system or organization,” and it goes on to give examples of correct usage, namely: “He was just a small cog in the wheel of organized crime;

This warehouse is an important cog in our distribution machine” Similarly, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines the idiom as “A person who is a small part of a large organization.” So, let the writer just call Awolowo and Azikiwe impediments, not cogs, in that context.’