By Segun Omolayo

We are not sure we could get a better introduction to this week’s edition than the kind words of Friday Jarikre, Esq. about the last edition of this column and about the column itself. He says via e-mail:

“Hello Uncle Segun,

“Your education column – Writers Beware – makes The Nation newspaper of Thursday is very exciting for me. Sir, you discussed idioms and pointed out some errors vis-à-vis their usage in our day-to-day communication.

The topic is captivating and very apt. English speakers in Nigeria are guilty of misusing idioms to suit themselves without recourse to the fact that  creative liberty is not applicable when one uses idioms.

May I please request that you deal with the following idiom that I consider to be misused by Nigerians than every other idiom – eat your cake and have it (wrong) and … have your cake and eat it (correct).

The majority of Nigerians say the former which is wrong compared to the latter which is correct. I will be most grateful if you deal with this in your next edition as it will be very beneficial to many Nigerians, especially your readers. Happy New Year, sir.”

Many thanks to you, too, Mr. Jarikre. And do have a wonderful 2020 (A calendar year was never so sweet-sounding!) Certainly, we will deal with quite a few English idioms in the editions to follow.

But first, we join you immediately to accentuate correct usage. As asserted in your missive, the correct idiom is: Have your cake and eat it, meaning “to have or do two good things at the same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary).

The dictionary illustrates thus: “You can’t have your cake and eat it – if you want more local services, you can’t expect to pay less tax.” So, never again should we say, you can’t eat your cake and have it.

Though idioms are not strictly matters of logic by definition, it can help us all to abolish the arrant adulteration of an otherwise elegant English standard idiom. Truly, can you have something you have already eaten?

And the next one is perhaps one of the most abused of the idioms:

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Not so for labour, rights and revolution activists of sundry hues or anyone who is staking a claim to equality or equity.

Hear them in their stock bombast: “Something tells me that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” To be sure, this kind of rhetoric always draws loud applause, especially on public rostrums – even when it is a sheer effusion of pure idiomatic garbage.

Correct usage is: what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and it is used to mean “what is appropriate in one case is also appropriate in the other case in question” or “what one person is allowed to do, another person must be allowed to do in a similar situation” (“Pop” Errors).

According to “Pop” Errors, “It is used to challenge a situation where different standards are used for different persons or things, or where there is discrimination between persons or things. But let it be stated correctly at all times like this:

“Something tells me that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

You would appreciate the inherent force of this commonplace saying a lot better if you would note that a gander is a male goose!

Read Also: IDIOMS I

A far cry

In the following sentence, someone has slightly tweaked this idiom. He says:

This is far cry from the time when the near-violent contention threatened the peace of the area.

No matter how adept you are at taking creative liberty, this idiom, like all other idioms, should not be altered mindlessly. The original idiom is: be a far cry from something, from which the misusage in the defective sentence has been adapted.

To many, the drop-off of the article a from the faulty adaptation of the idiom may not mean much. But if you care about euphony and elegance, it should matter greatly to you.

Remember, euphony is the pleasantness of a sound in your ears. If this is far cry sounds primitive in your ears, no one can accuse you of being too finicky.

To toe the line

Some simply choose to use this idiom the way they like, thereby altering the meaning irredeemably, as in:

Disciplinary measures should be taken to prevent others from towing the same path.

The mutilation of the standard idiom concerned here is almost three-sixty degrees. Two key words in it, namely, toe and line, have been wrongly replaced, thereby inventing an untenable idiom of the writer’s fancy.

The expression so abused is: toeing the line – a derivative of the idiom to toe the line, meaning “to do what you are ordered or expected to do” (Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, cited in “Pop” Errors).

According to the book, ‘Another form of the idiom is toe the mark, with a similar meaning, namely: “to do or say what somebody in authority tells you to say or do, even if you do not share the same opinion” (here citing Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary).’

To make matters clearer, we stretch out the highly-nuanced expression in the correct usage below:

Disciplinary measures should be taken to prevent others from toeing the line.