Two figures of speech that I hate

[xiphias]

There are, of course, competing homilies -- you should look before you strike while the iron is hot, because he who hesitates measures twice and cuts once. But I'm talking about sayings that are just plain WRONG on their face.

For the record -- given a choice, I DON'T measure, and rather line the piece up with where I want it to go, draw a mark, then cut along the mark. I don't ACTUALLY know if the board is 4' 9 1/2" or 4' 10" or whatever -- all I know is that it's the same length as the place that it's supposed to fit. So I actually "measure never and cut until it fits", but "measure twice and cut once" isn't WRONG -- it's just useful in different circumstances. (If I was cutting the piece elsewhere, for instance, and bringing it over, that's how I'd do it, for instance.)

1. "Fight fire with fire."

No. Don't. Fight fire with WATER. Or maybe a CO2 extinguisher. A bucket of dirt and a shovel. Halon fire suppression systems. Stuff like that. But, c'mon. There ARE specific, limited conditions in which controlled back burns clear out fuel to prevent fires from spreading. But it really shouldn't be your go-to solution.

2. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

You ever tried? If you've got a fruit fly trap, you know what you bait it with? Vinegar. Not honey. Because flies don't LIKE honey. Every once in a while, a fly will land in honey and get stuck, but they don't seek it out. Vinegar, on the other hand is CRAZY addictive to fruit flies. They seek out, y'know, rotting fruit. Which turns into vinegar. Which is what they like. Not honey.

I'm sure I could come up with others. Any other favorites?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And controlled burns ARE a thing that people do, and which are useful.

But they're not the go-to technique for most forms of fire. If my fire department showed up at my house when we had that kitchen fire years ago, and decided to do a controlled burn to keep it from coming up the stairs, it wouldn't have been the best choice.

And the way that the aphorism is used is "this is your first response. If someone is being violent and nasty, you should go ahead and be violent and nasty right back." So that's an aphorism which is both factually wrong, and metaphorically wrong.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Interesting! That's not the way I usually see that aphorism used. I usually see it used as "your first, and quite possibly second and third, responses have not worked. Now it's time to pull out the big guns."

Which, IMO, is much closer to the controlled burn scenario. If your kitchen fire had spread to the nearby grasslands...