This idea echoes the work of Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler, whose theory of the inferiority complex proposed that perceived weaknesses can become powerful motivators. Adler never singled out height, but later popular culture was quick to fill in the gaps.
The expression originated in the United States during the nineteenth century. Early recorded uses appear in American newspapers and literature in the 1870s. The phrase drew on a simple and familiar image: a person cutting or biting off a chunk of food too large to chew comfortably. The metaphor was easily understood and quickly became part of everyday speech. By the end of the century, it was being used figuratively to describe people whose ambitions exceeded their abilities or resources.
Writing on the wall is an idiom that describes a situation fortelling the bad news to come. In other words the bad news is already known when you see the writing on the wall.
Today, the expression is still widely used, often humorously or hyperbolically, to describe someone exceptionally attractive or charismatic.
His followers — the Maenads — were known for their ecstatic rituals, abandoning social norms in favour of dance, music, and intoxication. This wasn’t hedonism for the sake of it; it was release. A shedding of the rigid structures that defined everyday Greek life. In a society obsessed with order and reason, Dionysus represented the necessary counterweight: instinct, emotion, and the irrational.
In practice, the rule is simple enough to remember: if you’re talking about switching back and forth, use “alternate.” If you’re talking about choosing between options, use “alternative.
What keeps the idiom current is its imagery. Unlike more clinical alternatives – “disclose,” “reveal,” “divulge” – this one has texture. It moves. It scratches. It refuses containment. And perhaps that’s why it endures: because secrets, like cats, are never entirely obedient.
Schmooze has found its way into the English language along with other Yiddish phrases that add richness to expressions. Yiddish phrases are colourful and descript, hard to match in other languages.
A noose around the neck is an expression that means you are out of options. As the noose, a tightening rope knot moves closer to the throat, the subject is close to death, the deathknot, if you like.
Most people who use RSVP today don’t speak French, many not realising it’s French at all allowing it to blend into the language. The letters have effectively become a universal shorthand for, ‘Let us know if you’re coming.’
