[lit-ideas] "Bleach smells like bleach"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:13:30 EST
In "Million dollar baby", Clint Eastwood has this (to me) memorable line --
in dialogue with Morgan Freeman.
"Bleach smells like bleach"
-- The line is supposed to be ironic, but I wonder if other grammatical
variants -- without 'like' -- are possible to the native speaker.
"Bleach smells _of_ bleach"
doesn't sound too idiomatic.
For Grice (and Griceans), it may be true that bleach _does_ smell _like_
bleach -- even though it may _not_ (Grice's example: "The pillar box _seems_
red," when it _is_ red).
I looked for verbal modifiers to verb 'to smell' in the OED, and there's
only one quote with "smell like", but no clear explanation, for me, of what
other possible constructions are there, with 'smell'. The quote with 'smell
like'
is, also, figurative:
"It doesn't sound like Fascism. It doesn't smell like Fascism."
-- which is further in the negative, and thus bringing a different scenario.
It would be interesting to check how "bleach smells like bleach" translates
to other languages, and whether the 'comparative' particle "like" is also
required in those languages?
Cheers,
JL
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