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Cart Before The Horse
The expression ''cart before the horse'' is an idiom or proverb used to suggest something is done contrary to the natural or normally effective sequence of events. A cart is a vehicle that is ordinarily pulled by a horse, so to put the cart before the horse is an analogy for doing things in the wrong order. The figure of speech means doing things the wrong way round or with the wrong emphasis or confusing cause and effect. The meaning of the phrase is based on the common knowledge that a horse usually pulls a cart, despite rare examples of vehicles pushed by horses in 19th-century Germany and early 20th-century France. The earliest recorded use of the proverb was in the early 16th century. It was a figure of speech in the Renaissance.Adamson, Sylvia ''et al.'' (2007) ''Renaissance Figures of Speech,'' p. 133 A variant of the proverb is used by William Shakespeare in ''King Lear'' Act I, scene iv, line 230: "May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?" See also * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, an idiom's figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning. Idioms occur frequently in all languages; in English alone there are an estimated twenty-five million idiomatic expressions. Derivations Many idiomatic expressions were meant literally in their original use, but sometimes the attribution of the literal meaning changed and the phrase itself grew away from its original roots—typically leading to a folk etymology. For instance, the phrase "spill the beans" (meaning to reveal a secret) is first attested in 1919, but has been said to originate from an ancient method of voting by depositing beans in jars, which could be spilled, prematurely revealing the results. Other idioms are deliberately figurative. For example, "break ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbial expression is a type of a conventional saying similar to proverbs and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. Collectively, they form a folklore genre, genre of folklore. Some proverbs exist in more than one language because people borrow them from languages and cultures with which they are in contact. In the West, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus) have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs. Not all Biblical proverbs, however, were distributed to the same extent: one scholar has gathered evidence to show ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cart
A cart or dray (Australia and New Zealand) is a vehicle designed for transport, using two wheels and normally pulled by one or a pair of draught animals. A handcart is pulled or pushed by one or more people. It is different from the flatbed trolley also known as a dray, (for freight) or wagon, which is a heavy transport vehicle with four wheels and typically two or more humans. Over time, the term "cart" has come to mean nearly any small conveyance, including shopping carts, golf carts, gokarts, and UTVs, without regard to number of wheels, load carried, or means of propulsion. The draught animals used for carts may be horses, donkeys or mules, oxen, and even smaller animals such as goats or large dogs. History Carts have been mentioned in literature as far back as the second millennium B.C. Handcarts pushed by humans have been used around the world. In the 19th century, for instance, some Mormons traveling across the plains of the United States between 1856 and 1860 use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analogy
Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analog, or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, in which at least one of the premises, or the conclusion, is general rather than particular in nature. The term analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often (though not always) a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving, as well as decision making, argumentation, perception, generalization, memory, creativity, invention, prediction, emotion, explanation, concep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Figure Of Speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and '' tropes,'' where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify. An example of a scheme is a polysyndeton: the repetition of a conjunction before every element in a list, whereas the conjunction typically would appear only before the last element, as in "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"—emphasizing the danger and number of animals more than the prosaic wording with only the second "and". An example of a trope is the metaphor, describing one thing as something that it clearly is not in order to lead the mind to compare them, in "All the world's a stage." Four rhetorical operations Classical rhetoricians classified figures of speech into four categories or :Jansen, Jeroen (2008) Imitatio'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Horse Pushing A Cart
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Knowledge
Common knowledge is knowledge that is publicly known by everyone or nearly everyone, usually with reference to the community in which the knowledge is referenced. Common knowledge can be about a broad range of subjects, such as science, literature, history, or entertainment. Since individuals often have different knowledge bases, common knowledge can vary and may sometimes take large-scale studies to know for certain what is common knowledge amongst large groups of people. Often, common knowledge does not need to be cited. Common knowledge is distinct from general knowledge. In broader terms, common knowledge is used to refer to information that an agent would accept as valid, such as information that multiple users may know. Assigning something the label of common knowledge requires certain considerations about the involved community, group, society and/or individuals, the time period, the and the location. Variation Defining something as common knowledge can differ based o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hysteron-proteron
The hysteron proteron (from the el, ὕστερον πρότερον, ''hýsteron próteron'', "later earlier") is a rhetorical device. It occurs when the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first. The standard example comes from the ''Aeneid'' of Virgil: "''Moriamur, et in media arma ruamus''" ("Let us die, and charge into the thick of the fight"; ii. 353). An example of hysteron proteron encountered in everyday life is the common reference to putting on one's "shoes and socks", rather than "socks and shoes". By this deliberate reversal, hysteron proteron draws attention to the important point, so giving it primacy. Hysteron proteron is a form of hyperbaton, which describes general rearrangements of the sentence. It can also be defined as a figure of speech consisting of the reversal of a natural or rational order (as in "then came the thunder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wag The Dog
''Wag the Dog'' is a 1997 American political satire black comedy film produced and directed by Barry Levinson and starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. The film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. The screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's 1993 novel, '' American Hero''. ''Wag the Dog'' was released one month before the outbreak of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration in August 1998, which prompted the media to draw comparisons between the film and reality. The comparison was also made in December 1998 when the administration initiated a bombing campaign of Iraq during Clinton's impeachment trial over the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. It was made again in the spring of 1999 when the administration intervened in the Kosovo War and ini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-language Idioms
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphors Referring To Horses
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from ''As You Like It'': All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... :—William Shakespeare, ''As You Like It'', 2/7 This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world and a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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