Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 25/08/2005 23:09, Karl Randolph wrote:

...

> If I were ignorant of baseball where "strike out" means to 
> fail to get on base (or even there if this were the first 
> time I had ever observed baseball) and I were at a single's 
> bar and heard my host laugh that his friend had "struck 
> out" in his amourous attention of a pretty young thing, I 
> would have no idea, or very vague at best, what he meant 
> until it were explained to me.
>
>  
Well, Karl, as one who is almost ignorant of baseball, I can agree with 
and confirm the truth of what you say here! If I heard this here in the 
UK, where baseball is hardly played, I would take it that he had either 
hit her (struck out at her) or deleted her from his list of prospects 
(struck her out). Having been told what the baseball term means, I 
supposed you mean that he had not succeeded with her, but I would not 
understand this.

But I guess you wouldn't be much the wiser if I said that she must have 
bowled him a googly, although almost anyone in the UK, Australia and New 
Zealand would get the idea here.

Well, this can teach us one thing about Hebrew, that we shouldn't assume 
a full understanding of Hebrew idioms from the partial information that 
we have. There may well be unique idioms in the Bible - and similarly 
unique senses of words like XSD.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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