Colloquialisms – clarifies distance better

Colloquialisms can clarify distance better than dignified metes and bounds:

Just a dog’s bark away.
Within a gallon of gas.
In hootin’ and hollerin’ range.
Far as the eye could see-and beyond.

Colloquial English oftentimes defines a thought to a finer degree than does elementary English, but many linguists condemn resorting to the vernacular under any conditions. When a colloquial comment cannot be grasped readily, their criticism may be justified; but when the vernacular clarifies your ideas, why let dignity interfere with a desire to put your thought across?

Linguists likewise like long words, but the average man employs short terms. The last Presidential election was described on the night of the returns as “a cliff hanger,” and the best among the commentators quickly seized upon this pat description. It might be set out as an axiom that a short word should be used in preference to a long term since no less an authority than the Bard of Avon supported the idea. Shakespeare could compress words into monosyllables. “To be or not to be” is man’s largest question put into man’s smallest and simplest words.

Your audience gathered to hear you speak convincingly on a subject, not to listen to a pious patriarch trying to put over his pomposity. In many instances a foreign word or phrase has a connotation that has no exact English counterpart. The German expression “Gemutlichkeit” would employ a whole paragraph of English to cast the same spell. The Greeks had a word for it; the French do too. The high-collar crowd that disdains ordinary American colloquialisms, readily resorts to foreign words to accomplish the same purpose as the common man’s use of English vernacular. The genial Irishman who wishes you “The top o’ the mornin’ from the bottom o’ me heart” conveys more warm-hearted cordiality than a pompous old poser who dishes out some sophisticated salutation.

A cowpoke who’d just seen a wide-eyed maiden with her tousled hair falling down over her face, said that she reminded him of a heifer poking its head through the brush. To my mind, his description was more fitting than any comments of a tonsorial artist about her coy coiffure. When Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his Lady Bird were on a whistle-stop campaign in Texas, his greetings went like this: “We’re mighty glad you come out to howdy and shake with us”; “Mighty glad to press the flesh and get that glint in your eye.” The approval of the local voters registered even before he had time to say, “You make me feel like I’m in pretty tall cotton”. Needless to say, Senator Johnson was elected and one contributing factor might well be that he didn’t let dignity interfere with his desire to put a thought across.

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