Originally published at: Bring home the bagels, not the bacon: animal rights activists urge us to change idioms - Boing Boing
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Via Allan Rose Hill
Thoughtcrime detected.
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There is already an alternative idiom for “bringing home the bacon”. There’s “Getting that bread” 
For the other idioms, some of them sound very silly to me but the overall argument that perhaps some of the things we say can be problematic for various reasons. Not just animal rights but ableism, and other things. It has given me something to think about.
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That … that doesn’t really work.
Ok, that one definitely doesn’t work. You do have to keep feeding horses. Just later. Beating a dead horse later is just as pointless.
So are small fish less worthy of being freed? What’s the message here?
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“Kittens of the sea” didn’t take, either.
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I knew it was a PETA idea. Stupid, useless, pointless, and annoying. At least they didn’t callously kill some animals for this piece of idiocy.
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Bagels? Why do they hate us coeliacs? Why?
I’ve noticed that supermarkets gluten free sections are getting removed and replaced with vegan (and supermarket vegan food is all wheat) like it’s one or the other.
Is that why they hate us? It’s a death match?
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yeah there are alternative preexisting idioms for all of these I think, but a big part of what PETA does is bait people into sharing stuff like this
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I think that some of the well-meaning PETA folks who push for the cute names may be just a bit naive about whether that would gross out or change the behavior of omnivores even if the name changes did stick. We eat a ton of foods with cute names. More Americans have loving relationships with dogs than with cats, but hot dogs are our national food, and hush puppies are a yummy food item that has a cute animal name despite not even being made out of meat.
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Your periodic reminder that PETA literally kidnaps and murders pets.
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… with the “raw food” people in third place
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They are very litigious so I would not mention the fact that PETA kidnaps and murders pets without there being very clear proof that PETA kidnaps and murders pets! Thanks, snopes!
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It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
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Like Tom Cruising the Sea Org
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DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed . Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line . Another example is the hammer and the anvil , now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase."
George “1984” Orwell
Perhaps if I apply for a job at an abattoir, I’ll become a better writer.
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Long pig carpaccio?
No thanks.
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(Before opening the article to read, having only seen the headline) That sounds like PETA. Something this monumentally dumb for this cause can only be those frothing dipshits at PETA.
(Opens article) “… PETA”
I will take this advice from those learned and esteemed people as seriously as I take a proposal to leave strays at their “No Kill” animal-killing factories.
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Given that I’ve gone my entire life using idioms like these, having never actually skinned a cat or beaten a horse (dead or alive!), I think I’ll go ahead and use any damn language I please, thanks. Go away, PETA.
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