Comments on: The Spinstitute for Glossological Research

By: delagar

delagar — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:11:25 +0000

I know I am probably too late to this conversation & no one will be reading this, but I teach History of the English Language (HEL, as my students fondly, I am sure, call it), and this very question arose a few semesters ago. I did some research. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both “tow the line” and “toe the line” are correct variants of the same idiom. These are known as folk etymologies, meaning we all have these notions of what the phrases mean, which we invent upon hearing them. Since both “tow the line” and “toe the line” make sense in the context, both are, therefore, perfectly correct.

See also “pillar of the community” and its local (local to the Ozark hills, where I teach) variant “pillow of the community,” which cracks my students up when I give it as an example. On the other hand, given that in the Ozark hills pillow and similar words, like window and meadow are pronounced not with the ending -ow but with the ending -er, pillow, as you can see, sounds like piller.

And there you are.

This ends the lecture.

Sorry.

By: slythwolf

slythwolf — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:24:11 +0000

The one on the right really needs her feet trimmed.

You are not wrong. That looks kinda painful.

By: Jill

Jill — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:02:14 +0000

“Let’s touch bases later today” means “let’s play baseball later today.”

By: LisaB

LisaB — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:05:01 +0000

Ok, what about this: Increasingly I hear “let’s touch bases later today” — but shouldn’t we be touching just one “base”?

By: Rumblelizard

Rumblelizard — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:30:11 +0000

The correct expression is toe the line. However, you can pull on the towline to tow the barge.

By: Orange

Orange — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:10:31 +0000

And with nary an ellipsis!

I was forced to retreat here after encountering the Scary Scolopendra (sp?) leg in the newer post. I couldn’t read the post. Too scary! The mea culpa with which the post began did not prepare me for the horrors that lurked below! *fanning self (case of the vapors)*

By: Jill

Jill — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:49:37 +0000

“Tows the line”? No. No, no, no.

Orange, I knew I could count on you for level-headed analysis. Thanks!

By: FyrDrakken

FyrDrakken — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:55:26 +0000

Yeah, when I hear the phrase “toe the line,” my mental image is of the oft-repeated scene in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, of the weekly ship inspection with all the various crewmembers lining up on deck, toes to a particular deck seam, obedient and correct, orderly and submissive.

By: Saurs

Saurs — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:15:48 +0000

On second thought, “toe the line” needn’t necessarily indicate subservience. If, for example, I’m a non-conformist at heart, but I don’t want to suffer the consequences of deviating too far from the norm, I’ll toe the line, gently getting my (unique and deviant) point across without being too obvious about it. I think that’s as far as the meaning of the phrase can be legitimately stretched, however.

By: Saurs

Saurs — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:10:50 +0000

“Tow the line” strikes me as a hyper-correction or an example of counter-intuition getting the best of the speaker, on par with “you and I” in the accusative or “irregardless” in any usage.

To “toe the line” has never indicated (heretofore, anyway) defiance to some perceived status quo, but conformity to that status quo. I’m toeing some dude’s/party’s/platform’s line ‘cos otherwise there will be hell to pay or I won’t get my requisite supply of CoolWhip.