Speranza
Some people wonder if the phrase
"penny for your thoughts"
that people still use might be INSULTING, since today a penny is such a small
amount of money (cfr. Bing Crosby, "There'll be pennies from heaven"), and might produce the sharp response “Is that all you think my
thoughts are worth?”, or via irony and sarcasm, alla Enid Blyton in "Five On A Treasure Island":
"This was a long thought to think, and George looked
very serious while she was
thinking it. Julian looked
up and caught her blue eyes fixed on him. He smiled.
“Penny for your thoughts!” he said.
“They’re not worth a penny,” said George,
going red.
Yet, as M. Quinion notes, the implication that the thoughts are worth such a small amount of money "certainly wasn’t the idea behind it, since a penny was
worth rather a lot when the phrase was first written down about 1535."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment