[etni] Idiom formation via transliteration -- a 4th pattern
- From: Israel Cohen <cohen.izzy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: WordczaRus <WordczaRus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2014 17:16:23 +0300
In today's *World Wide Words *blog, Martin Quinion wrote:
*From Martin Sturmer*: I can understand why a skeleton in the closet should
mean an embarrassing fact that's best kept secret, but how did it come into
existence?
As usual, Mr. Quinion cites the earliest extant examples of the word or
phrase under discussion. He is really very good at this. But in my opinion,
he did not answer Mr. Sturmer's question.
However, thanks to an examination of this idiom, I have discovered a 4th
pattern of idiom formation via transliteration. You can see it described
with "skeleton in the closet" as the example at
h
ttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2033458/Hebrew/Idiom_Formation_via_Transliteration.docx
In essence it is a "back-formation". You start with a target-language word
or phrase for which you want an idiom. *Transliterate *that word or phrase
to a foreign language, then *translate* the foreign term back into the
target language.
In this case, SeCReT sounds like Hebrew miSGeReT which means framework or
skeleton. The Hebrew root SGR means "to close", hence the closet.
Mr. Quinion mentions that the more frequent British expression is "skeleton
in the cupboard" and he suggests (correctly I think) that the association
of "closet" with "water closet" resulted in this change. I note that the
Hebrew word @aRoN is a homonym that means both "closet" and "cupboard".
It seems I have a closet in the skeleton/framework of my name.
Best regards,
Izzy
Israel Aaron Cohen
Petah Tikva, Israel
cohen.izzy@xxxxxxxxx
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