new phrases; old phrases
Sandra Dodd
In defense of "C-I-O," someone wrote on someone's blog somewhere far
away:
"I suppose I’ve never been in a family where either parent had the
time to be at the beck and call of their babies 24/7. "
I think it's lazy and chickenshit for people to turn phrases into
letters like "C-I-O," pronounced "cee eye oh" instead of "cry it
out." "Cry it out" is not harder to type than something with
hyphens. It's not longer to say, it's still three syllables. But
giving it a secret-jargon term makes it seem more distant, more a
general practice than a decision, more scientific, less about *crying.*
So that's too new, too "modern," too much attempt to turn flesh-and-
blook crying baby into something chrome and glass, or at least
organically treated crib-wood.
But that was tied in with the phrase "at...beck and call." Because of
my many years of medieval-studies hobby and my long interest in
language, I know a lot about "beck and call." I've thought about it
and written about it. What I wrote was not about babies, it was
about ladies-in-waiting and other attendants in a tableau situation, a
kind of theatrical make-believe situation where I've been a coach and
director.
I am at my family's beck and call, because I like them. If I have
house guests, I am at their beck and call. Nurses are at the beck and
call of patients. Flight attendants are at the beck and call of
pilots first and then passengers. Retail store clerks are at the beck
and call of customers unless assigned to stay behind the cash register
(convenience store clerks are not going to leave the liquor and
gambling cards to go 20 feet to help you find the cheese crackers).
That phrase needs be added here: http://sandradodd.com/phrases
Sandra
P.S.
For anyone who's into language, or curious about what my hobby was
before it was writing about unschooling, some "beck and call" notes:
"Ranking people shouldn't have to say much to get someone to come
closer. The concept of being at someone's "beck and call" means close
enough that a gesture (beck) or call will get them there in a jiffy
(or, more likely, in the nonce, meaning "in an instance") They can't
come quick, because "quick" meant "alive" in period, not fast
(besides, even now teachers will tell you to use "quickly."). If
someone said "quickly" it meant "lively," which can also be used in
terms of speed, as in "step lively." Fast meant stuck, constant, or
fixed. Supper was "fixed" when it was put on the table. (In the
southern U.S. people still "fix supper" even though it's not broken.)"
I wrote that. It's part of this:
http://sandradodd.com/ideas/language1.html
and there's more particular discussion in the fifth paragraph of this
letter:
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/attendants
away:
"I suppose I’ve never been in a family where either parent had the
time to be at the beck and call of their babies 24/7. "
I think it's lazy and chickenshit for people to turn phrases into
letters like "C-I-O," pronounced "cee eye oh" instead of "cry it
out." "Cry it out" is not harder to type than something with
hyphens. It's not longer to say, it's still three syllables. But
giving it a secret-jargon term makes it seem more distant, more a
general practice than a decision, more scientific, less about *crying.*
So that's too new, too "modern," too much attempt to turn flesh-and-
blook crying baby into something chrome and glass, or at least
organically treated crib-wood.
But that was tied in with the phrase "at...beck and call." Because of
my many years of medieval-studies hobby and my long interest in
language, I know a lot about "beck and call." I've thought about it
and written about it. What I wrote was not about babies, it was
about ladies-in-waiting and other attendants in a tableau situation, a
kind of theatrical make-believe situation where I've been a coach and
director.
I am at my family's beck and call, because I like them. If I have
house guests, I am at their beck and call. Nurses are at the beck and
call of patients. Flight attendants are at the beck and call of
pilots first and then passengers. Retail store clerks are at the beck
and call of customers unless assigned to stay behind the cash register
(convenience store clerks are not going to leave the liquor and
gambling cards to go 20 feet to help you find the cheese crackers).
That phrase needs be added here: http://sandradodd.com/phrases
Sandra
P.S.
For anyone who's into language, or curious about what my hobby was
before it was writing about unschooling, some "beck and call" notes:
"Ranking people shouldn't have to say much to get someone to come
closer. The concept of being at someone's "beck and call" means close
enough that a gesture (beck) or call will get them there in a jiffy
(or, more likely, in the nonce, meaning "in an instance") They can't
come quick, because "quick" meant "alive" in period, not fast
(besides, even now teachers will tell you to use "quickly."). If
someone said "quickly" it meant "lively," which can also be used in
terms of speed, as in "step lively." Fast meant stuck, constant, or
fixed. Supper was "fixed" when it was put on the table. (In the
southern U.S. people still "fix supper" even though it's not broken.)"
I wrote that. It's part of this:
http://sandradodd.com/ideas/language1.html
and there's more particular discussion in the fifth paragraph of this
letter:
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/attendants
Sandra Dodd
flesh and blood. Not blook. And I've been sitting here half an hour
hoping to mention a typo in another post that's just not coming through.
Anu Garg. Not "Any Garg." Just ANU Garg. (but that post isn't here
yet.)
hoping to mention a typo in another post that's just not coming through.
Anu Garg. Not "Any Garg." Just ANU Garg. (but that post isn't here
yet.)
Pam Sorooshian
> "I suppose I’ve never been in a family where either parent had theI think this was said with sarcasm, as if it would be readily apparent
> time to be at the beck and call of their babies 24/7.
to anybody that the very idea of parents being at the beck and call of a
baby 24/7 would be ridiculous. Poor little babies. For some reason I've
been through a week of being around parents being quite mean to small
children. I'm looking forward to hanging out with a whole bunch of
unschoolers on Wednesday and being soothed by their sweetness to their
children.
Roya and I had an interesting conversation yesterday. She's working at a
summer daycare program - a really really good one run by a person who
has the "old-fashioned" idea that children should be free to play and
have fun and she tries to make daycare as free and in the control of the
kids, themselves, as possible. Anyway, Roya plays with the kids there,
or facilitates their play, and she was saying how surprisingly easy it
is, even for her, to say "no" to kids' requests, when she could find
ways to say yes. Lots of the kids are very needy in the sense that they
very very obviously are not getting enough attention from parents. They
will cling to her and hug her and tell her they love her. And lots of
them are obviously very restricted and controlled at home (and at
school) and some have really awful parents, and lots of them have a
habit of trying to find the limits or boundaries and pushing them. She
has a group of kids to keep an eye on - her job is to keep them safe
while pretty much doing every thing she possibly can to support their
interests and meet their needs. Keep in mind, this is a 25 yo who has
been unschooled and not had arbitrary limits or controls in her own
life. And STILL she said she hears, "No," come out of her mouth far too
frequently. She backs up, she said, over and over throughout the day and
says, "Well, maybe, let's see if we can do that somehow." She says the
"no" comes from feeling pressured - that the neediness and
demandingness and the pushiness of some of the kids gets wearing and the
"no" is more to say, "No more," than really "no" to that particular
request. I told her I thought that was sometimes the same kind of
reason for parents. She said she was getting really good practice in
finding ways to say yes more. So we talked about some of the problems
people have had with that concept "say yes more" and how it made some
people think they have to say yes ALL the time to absolutely everything.
Roya said she was getting really good at thinking about what would
"serve the purpose" of what a kid was asking. I liked that way of
thinking about how we respond, as parents, to requests....figure out
what will "serve the purpose" for the child.
Anyway - what surprised her was how easy it was to slip into "no" as a
default when being with a group of kids and how it took conscious effort
on her part not to do that.
-pam
k
CIO... when I first started seeing that I kept forgetting what it was.
The biggest reason I got into attachment parenting is I don't hear
well-- sheer luck. At first I didn't want to miss something important
and it was about anxiety. I grew less worried and still didn't want to
miss anything.
Had I been younger I probably would have taken my mom's offer of help
after the birth, but I didn't care if the house got messier. I was
busy recuperating and getting to know Karl. Over the phone the advice
was to not let him monopolize my time. Something about getting back to
normal? By that time I had had years of ignoring parental advice with
little or no ill effects.
On finding ways to say yes, like Roya is finding. That's an
interesting read. Now that Karl's 7, it helps to say some of that to
him, that if I can't say yes to what he asks I can see how to say yes
to what he's asking. For instance, doing a particular activity might
not be possible right that moment but saying to him that we can find a
way to do something similar if the big part of his reasoning is about
something else. So let's do this instead... and that may work just
fine. Or the original request could become available later on.
~Katherine
The biggest reason I got into attachment parenting is I don't hear
well-- sheer luck. At first I didn't want to miss something important
and it was about anxiety. I grew less worried and still didn't want to
miss anything.
Had I been younger I probably would have taken my mom's offer of help
after the birth, but I didn't care if the house got messier. I was
busy recuperating and getting to know Karl. Over the phone the advice
was to not let him monopolize my time. Something about getting back to
normal? By that time I had had years of ignoring parental advice with
little or no ill effects.
On finding ways to say yes, like Roya is finding. That's an
interesting read. Now that Karl's 7, it helps to say some of that to
him, that if I can't say yes to what he asks I can see how to say yes
to what he's asking. For instance, doing a particular activity might
not be possible right that moment but saying to him that we can find a
way to do something similar if the big part of his reasoning is about
something else. So let's do this instead... and that may work just
fine. Or the original request could become available later on.
~Katherine
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
> In defense of "C-I-O," someone wrote on someone's blog somewhere far
> away:
>
> "I suppose I’ve never been in a family where either parent had the
> time to be at the beck and call of their babies 24/7. "
>
> I think it's lazy and chickenshit for people to turn phrases into
> letters like "C-I-O," pronounced "cee eye oh" instead of "cry it
> out." "Cry it out" is not harder to type than something with
> hyphens. It's not longer to say, it's still three syllables. But
> giving it a secret-jargon term makes it seem more distant, more a
> general practice than a decision, more scientific, less about *crying.*
>
> So that's too new, too "modern," too much attempt to turn flesh-and-
> blook crying baby into something chrome and glass, or at least
> organically treated crib-wood.
>
> But that was tied in with the phrase "at...beck and call." Because of
> my many years of medieval-studies hobby and my long interest in
> language, I know a lot about "beck and call." I've thought about it
> and written about it. What I wrote was not about babies, it was
> about ladies-in-waiting and other attendants in a tableau situation, a
> kind of theatrical make-believe situation where I've been a coach and
> director.
>
> I am at my family's beck and call, because I like them. If I have
> house guests, I am at their beck and call. Nurses are at the beck and
> call of patients. Flight attendants are at the beck and call of
> pilots first and then passengers. Retail store clerks are at the beck
> and call of customers unless assigned to stay behind the cash register
> (convenience store clerks are not going to leave the liquor and
> gambling cards to go 20 feet to help you find the cheese crackers).
>
> That phrase needs be added here: http://sandradodd.com/phrases
>
> Sandra
>
> P.S.
> For anyone who's into language, or curious about what my hobby was
> before it was writing about unschooling, some "beck and call" notes:
>
> "Ranking people shouldn't have to say much to get someone to come
> closer. The concept of being at someone's "beck and call" means close
> enough that a gesture (beck) or call will get them there in a jiffy
> (or, more likely, in the nonce, meaning "in an instance") They can't
> come quick, because "quick" meant "alive" in period, not fast
> (besides, even now teachers will tell you to use "quickly."). If
> someone said "quickly" it meant "lively," which can also be used in
> terms of speed, as in "step lively." Fast meant stuck, constant, or
> fixed. Supper was "fixed" when it was put on the table. (In the
> southern U.S. people still "fix supper" even though it's not broken.)"
>
> I wrote that. It's part of this:
> http://sandradodd.com/ideas/language1.html
> and there's more particular discussion in the fifth paragraph of this
> letter:
> http://sandradodd.com/duckford/attendants
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
Jenny Cyphers
***But that was tied in with the phrase "at...beck and call."***
My neighbor, who's child ran away from home, which followed with a DHS
investigation of child abuse, used a couple of phrases yesterday when talking
about her kids. I had gone over there to see if she still had her kids and to
generally find out if all was okay.
She doesn't know how to make her kids "tow the line" now because her kids now
know they have the "upper hand".
Any insight to those phrases?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
My neighbor, who's child ran away from home, which followed with a DHS
investigation of child abuse, used a couple of phrases yesterday when talking
about her kids. I had gone over there to see if she still had her kids and to
generally find out if all was okay.
She doesn't know how to make her kids "tow the line" now because her kids now
know they have the "upper hand".
Any insight to those phrases?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sandra Dodd
-=-She doesn't know how to make her kids "tow the line" now because
her kids now
know they have the "upper hand".-=-
Sometimes "Tow the line" is written and defended as "toe the line"--
not to move until someone tells you to, but to stay right there (as at
the starting line of a race. Be exactly where someone else tells you
to be, down to your toe and don't move until directed.
I used to see it written that way more than "tow."
"Upper hand" my first guess is the batter-choosing method of hands on
bats and whoever has the top "grab" wins.
Oh hey! Someone agrees with me:
Also, whip hand. A dominating or controlling position, as in Once you
let Jeff get the upper hand there'll be no stopping him, or When it
comes to checkers, my son-in-law generally has the whip hand. The
first term alludes to an ancient game in which each player in turn
grasps a stick with one hand, beginning from the bottom, and the last
who can put his hand at the top wins. Its figurative use dates from
the late 1400s. The variant alludes to the driver who holds the whip
in a horse-drawn vehicle; it was being used figuratively by the late
1600s
I was going to mention "having the whip hand"--didn't mean they could
whip the other person, it meant they were driving the coach/wagon/
horses. I know it from Jane Austen, a woman telling her son-in-law
that now she had the whip hand over him, because he had married the
daughter and couldn't give her back. (Sense and Sensibility: " you
may abuse me as you please said the good natured old lady you have
taken Charlotte off my hands and cannot give her back again so there I
have the whip hand of you " ).
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
her kids now
know they have the "upper hand".-=-
Sometimes "Tow the line" is written and defended as "toe the line"--
not to move until someone tells you to, but to stay right there (as at
the starting line of a race. Be exactly where someone else tells you
to be, down to your toe and don't move until directed.
I used to see it written that way more than "tow."
"Upper hand" my first guess is the batter-choosing method of hands on
bats and whoever has the top "grab" wins.
Oh hey! Someone agrees with me:
Also, whip hand. A dominating or controlling position, as in Once you
let Jeff get the upper hand there'll be no stopping him, or When it
comes to checkers, my son-in-law generally has the whip hand. The
first term alludes to an ancient game in which each player in turn
grasps a stick with one hand, beginning from the bottom, and the last
who can put his hand at the top wins. Its figurative use dates from
the late 1400s. The variant alludes to the driver who holds the whip
in a horse-drawn vehicle; it was being used figuratively by the late
1600s
I was going to mention "having the whip hand"--didn't mean they could
whip the other person, it meant they were driving the coach/wagon/
horses. I know it from Jane Austen, a woman telling her son-in-law
that now she had the whip hand over him, because he had married the
daughter and couldn't give her back. (Sense and Sensibility: " you
may abuse me as you please said the good natured old lady you have
taken Charlotte off my hands and cannot give her back again so there I
have the whip hand of you " ).
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
k
What I found says "toe the line" was about loyalty to party politics
in the House of Commons (or Parliament.. I forget which). Getting the
"upper hand" is very old (according to http://www.phrases.org.uk/). A
game of chance in the 15th century, the details of which are lost
except the part where players competed to top other hands chasing up a
bat, hand over hand, like in sandlot baseball. The last hand could
control the bat if they were able to hold it without dropping it... it
couldn't just be a couple fingers that couldn't hold on.
~Katherine
in the House of Commons (or Parliament.. I forget which). Getting the
"upper hand" is very old (according to http://www.phrases.org.uk/). A
game of chance in the 15th century, the details of which are lost
except the part where players competed to top other hands chasing up a
bat, hand over hand, like in sandlot baseball. The last hand could
control the bat if they were able to hold it without dropping it... it
couldn't just be a couple fingers that couldn't hold on.
~Katherine
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...> wrote:
> ***But that was tied in with the phrase "at...beck and call."***
>
> My neighbor, who's child ran away from home, which followed with a DHS
> investigation of child abuse, used a couple of phrases yesterday when talking
> about her kids. I had gone over there to see if she still had her kids and to
> generally find out if all was okay.
>
> She doesn't know how to make her kids "tow the line" now because her kids now
> know they have the "upper hand".
>
> Any insight to those phrases?
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
dezignarob
=====She doesn't know how to make her kids "tow the line" now because her kids now
Here's something:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html
Has to do with staying behind the starting line of a footrace.
According to www.etymology.com
"Upper hand "advantage" is late 15c., probably from wrestling."
(I was thinking card games, which is what wiktionary suggests.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upper_hand )
So both phrases have to do with contests with winners and losers.
Hmmmmm.
Robyn L. Coburn
www.robyncoburn.blogspot.com
> know they have the "upper hand".It's TOE not tow, apparently.
>
> Any insight to those phrases?=====
Here's something:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html
Has to do with staying behind the starting line of a footrace.
According to www.etymology.com
"Upper hand "advantage" is late 15c., probably from wrestling."
(I was thinking card games, which is what wiktionary suggests.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upper_hand )
So both phrases have to do with contests with winners and losers.
Hmmmmm.
Robyn L. Coburn
www.robyncoburn.blogspot.com