I am about to call this a day. I wonder where that phrase originated. Elaine, get on that one. If it’s interesting, tell me about it. If it’s dull, I don’t care. I imagine a greasy old dude walking over to his kerosene lantern and saying, “This is a day.” And then he exchanges his overalls for a nighty and climbs into bed.
That’s not exactly how I will do it. I will just announce it on a blog. But the reason I would call it a day is that it is a day. A day that is done, but a day nonetheless. It is what it is called.
This brings me, albeit awkwardly, to things that are called the wrong thing. Or perhaps I should say that they are irresponsibly defined. A baker’s dozen. Why do people DO that? Why do I have to know that a Baker’s Dozen is 13? Why can’t that just be called 13 of something? A dozen is 12. A Baker’s Dozen should be 12 of something that belongs to that particular baker.
Really. I mean this. This is hard for people like me. People who struggle to read the recipe right are certainly going to be challenged by the cutsie colloquialisms that belong to real cooks, don’t you think? The jargon is staggering.
And not that this is really related, but just walk alongside me for a second. A cake mix. Wouldn’t you think that is just for cakes? Is everybody supposed to know that you can use a yellow cake mix for yellow CUPcakes? There aren’t separate mixes for cupcakes?
Well, maybe that just seems really, REALLY obvious to every last person that is over 11 years old. Maybe even to people who are under 11. Or maybe to people who are over 11 but don’t speak a lick of English. Maybe I’m the only English-speaking, over-11 person in the free world that would question whether there’s such a thing as a dedicated cupcake mix.
The answer was as disconcerting as the fact that there are two kinds of dozen.
And so with that, I will call this a day.
Day.
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I am glad you called it a day, because I really don’t relate to this “doll” thing. Maybe you should do fishing……or sailing…something like that.
That is how I feel about spelling, all those stupid rules, I before E , except after C. and that rule dosen’t even apply all the time…… And some times letters are silent, who thought of that one????!
I before E, except after C and in the case of ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’! I learned that one from my 7th grade English teacher at the Academy…any guesses who that would have been?!!! 🙂
Good to know someone retained SOMETHING. 🙂
At first, I thought I was going to learn about the phrase “per se”. But I don’t know where the other phrase came from either. Except I just googled it and now I do!
I didn’t google it but I would imagine that “calling it a day” probably came from Genesis when God created the earth . The rest of your post probably comes under the heading of common sense.
I probably used the word probably too many times. 🙂