By Segun Omolayo

Revving up on idioms, let us consider another set of commonly distorted idioms, namely: behind closed doors; be/stand head and shoulders above somebody or something; he who pays the piper calls the tune; armchair analyst; and put off the evil day.

The familiarity and everyday occurrence of these terms are shared characteristics, plus their frequent and reckless abuse. That reminds us to try to master these special properties, if we want to be counted among the schooled users of the English language, not just instinctive writers, who many a time may not know why they are right where they are right and why they are wrong where they are wrong.

Behind closed doors

Many are enamoured of this idiom when reporting high-level meetings, consultations, strategy sessions and the like. Our concern here is that the idiom is often mangled as in the statement below:

The House of Representatives continued the session behind closed-door. 

It does not matter that your reader may rightly guess your meaning. But you must bear in mind that accuracy is essential when deploying idioms, especially as people tend to resort to such expressions because they want to be colourful and elegant. While that is allowed, you must not mis-educate and keep your reader guessing.

And please be reminded, therefore, that behind closed doors is the correct term for the sentence and message in consideration, NOT closed-door, which is a rather bizarre invention.

Behind closed doors is used to describe something done “without the public being allowed to attend or know what is happening” or to refer to something done “in private” (“Pop” Errors). See its application in the correction below:

The House of Representatives continued the session behind closed doors.

Please do not say that the difference between the correct and the incorrect expressions is just an unwarranted hyphen. This little matter makes a big difference between the stickler for correct usage and the slapdash instinctive writer.

Be/stand head and shoulders above somebody or something

With re-assured lexical swagger, not a few distort this term, especially when they want to wax lyrical and sound erudite and important. Again, the elite are the chief purveyors of such bombasts, as the following statement suggests.

The party leadership stands shoulder high above its political opponents. . . . .

You must be familiar with this kind of grandstanding rhetoric from political actors, particularly in Nigeria where fusillades of political vitriol in press statements are daily fare. To be sure, lexical exactitude takes the backstage in such moments.

“The English idiom so mangled in the statement is be/stand head and shoulders above somebody or something, meaning “to be much better than people or things;” or “far superior to” (“Pop” Errors). In other words, to correctly convey the sense of the party leadership’s superiority to their rivals, the statement should run thus:

Read Also: IDIOMS II

The party leadership stands head and shoulders above its political opponents.

OR

The party leadership is head and shoulders above its political opponents.

You would do well to note the plural word shoulders in the idiom and apply it in that form whenever you are using the expression.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

You are our witness that this famous idiom is daily twisted in thousands of speeches and written messages. The idiom is perhaps more famous for its notorious abuse; wherever you turn, you encounter someone asserting the authority of somebody with the help of this idiom, but mostly incorrectly invoked.

Again, arrant carelessness and the unquestioning adoption of what is popular, correctly or incorrectly, may explain the festering notoriety in this context and in respect of so many other idioms. The condition of writers with this habit tends to get aggravated where they have role models considered infallible from whom they take their cues.

Haven’t you heard people saying, my professor says this, my professor says that, even when you know his teacher has taught him nonsense? Such followers will forever write this kind of egregious error:

He used the occasion to douse the doubts of cynics who believe he who pays the piper dictates the tune.

He who pays the piper dictates the tune is not correct. It is a distortion taken too far, having assumed orthodoxy with age-long misusage. The correct form of the idiom is: He who pays the piper calls the tune. It is used to mean “the person who provides the money for something can also control how it is spent” (“Pop” Errors). Usually, you use it “to stress who is in charge of something” (ibid.).

Armchair analyst/critic

A typical twist of this idiom is:

I am not an armed chair analyst. 

The distortion here is comical and meaningless. The correct expression is: an armchair analyst, NOT armed chair analyst. Our writers’ companion explains: ‘You are an armchair analyst when you know “about a subject through books and television, rather than by doing it for yourself.”  By the same token, many are derided as armchair critics.’

Put off the evil day

The significance of this entry is that, like the other idioms we have discussed, you see this mutilated every day – and nobody flinches in horror! More or less, this idiom has been re-written, as in:

Amnesties will, therefore, be another attempt not only to create an opportunity for anarchists, but to further postpone the evil days.

But we are complaining! The reason is, the re-write is not the same thing as its original, unadulterated form, which is put off the evil day. We are advised that “when you put off the evil day, you change a bad thing “to a later time or date” (“Pop” Errors).