Fiction Daily

Yesterday driving home with unexpected relief after a stressful appointment in Chapel Hill (nice people, stressful circumstances), Greg and I had time to let off steam and laugh about things.

At one point he goes, Here’s something that really gets my gourd.

You see Greg has a talent for confounding figures of speech, twisting and mixing them into almost expressions that are still recognizable, but somehow not right. And you can’t figure out why. I’ve heard it called malaphorism, but not sure that’s a real word.

Since we were driving, I did not have a dictionary on me and was forced to sit there and whine, Honey, are you sure that’s right? That doesn’t sound right to me. But I couldn’t think of what it was supposed to be.

Now, armed with my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, I can at last settle the matter.

My husband, I’m afraid, was a little out of his gourd, what with the long drive and stressful situation yesterday when he was trying to express himself.

Out of your gourd means to be out of your mind, or crazy. It also refers to being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

What he meant to say, I believe, was Do you want to know what gets my goat?

I have no idea why we refer to this beleaguered ruminant to express irritation, but that’s the common usage. To get your goat means it gets on your last nerve.

If something gets your last goat, you could say it really galls you. Gall means impudent behavior … coming from the bile-filled organ we affectionately call the gallbladder.

Used as a verb, it is transitive, and means to irritate or even give rise to a sore on the skin, such as when a bridle abrades a horse’s coat.

Of course it it were me chomping at the bit, it would probably get my goat. But that’s a horse of a different color.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Figuratively Speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.