Literature

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Here endeth the boring bits! Phew!

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Happy Wednesday, word nerds! Today’s Word Nerd post is inspired by yesterday’s Top Ten Tuesday post in a round-about kind of way. Yesterday’s topic was Books I’d Slay a Lion to Get Early. As I was thinking about the post, I began thinking about phrases other than ‘slay a lion’ that could be used to convey the same sort of meaning, and one of the first ones that came to me was I’d give my eye-teeth. It wasn’t long before I was asking myself, ‘What’s so special about my eye-teeth, anyway?’

First of all, what are your eye-teeth? Also known as canines, these are the ‘pointy’ teeth third from the centre on either side of your mouth. For a while the term applied specifically to the teeth in this position on the upper jaw, but it’s gradually come to include the equivalent teeth on the lower jaw. Prior to the study of human anatomy, it was believed there was a nerve connecting the eye and the canine tooth on the same side, hence the term eye-teeth.

If you look around on the internet, you’ll quickly learn there’s no definitive answer to why people thought the eye-teeth were so valuable. Some theories relate the saying to a similar one—cutting your eye-teeth—which refers to the fact that the eye-teeth are among the last of a baby’s first set of teeth to erupt. If you’re cutting your eye-teeth, you’re reaching a new level of maturity. It then follows, according to this school of thought, that your eye-teeth symbolise maturity and experience, and if you’re willing to give your eye-teeth, you’re implying that you’d exchange that experience and wisdom for the thing in question.

Other theories take a more functional approach. The belief that there was a nerve running between the eye and its corresponding canine tooth seems to have given rise to the myth that the removal of an eye-tooth would cause blindness in the corresponding eye. While that may not be true, we DO now know that the eye-teeth are critical to the shape of the jaw and for supporting the other teeth when chewing. The eye-teeth are not only the strongest teeth, but they also have the longest roots (and are therefore perhaps one of the most difficult/painful to remove? I wasn’t able to find a definite answer on that point). In any case, these theories imply that one is willing to give up sight or allow basic activities like speech and eating to be adversely affected, so great is their desire.

In researching this saying, however, I came across a most interesting piece of information that makes me wonder whether there’s another possible explanation. Did you know that they removed teeth from the bodies of soldiers who died in the Battle of Waterloo to make dentures? True story! Dentistry was in its infancy in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, but sugar consumption and tooth whitening practices that wore away the enamel on teeth meant that the teeth of the wealthy were far from healthy. You can read more about it in this article from the BBC, but basically, dentures were a hot item, and while they could be made of ivory, real teeth were preferred and people were willing to pay for them! And the eye-teeth appear to have been the highest paying of the frontward teeth.

The phrase I’d give my eye-teeth first appears in the early 19th Century as well. Is it possible that the phrase came about because a person was so keen to do or have something they’d take the drastic action of selling their eye-teeth to bring it about? We’ll probably never know for sure, but it’s an answer that makes as much sense as any other I came across.

Which do you think is the most plausible explanation?

PS – for those of you still waiting to find out the correct definition of ‘Troglodyte’ from this post, the answer was (b) a cave-dweller or hermit. 🙂

My feelings about this book are a bit all over the place! With four of Solomon’s wives featured as characters, I suspected I might struggle with the story on some level, but one of the things I love about fiction is that it gives me the opportunity to put myself in someone else’s shoes and understand their motives, even if I wouldn’t have made the same choices.

The biggest way this book did that for me was in showing how Solomon could convince himself that he was heeding God’s wisdom even as he continued following many of the world’s practices—like building a harem. A King’s power was often at least partly demonstrated by the size of his harem, and offering and accepting foreign women as wives was a common means of making political alliances and securing peace. In this story, Solomon acknowledged God’s warning not to take multiple wives but justified his harem as a political necessity and placated his conscience by ensuring that he didn’t allow his wives to turn him from worshipping God.

I also began to understand that the gift of wisdom can be a double-edged sword. It can blend with human wisdom so imperceptibly that we can be deceived into believing we are still fully heeding God’s wisdom when in fact we’re relying on our own, as happened with Solomon. My only complaint here is that I felt as though this theme didn’t become clear until towards the end.

Where I struggled with this story was with the wives, as I suspected, but not for the reasons I anticipated. Firstly, I felt as though there was no closure to their stories. Each wife was featured in turn in the lead-up to her marriage to Solomon but then faded out of the story, and seemingly his life, as the next wife came along. I know there are novellas corresponding to these characters that give a fuller account of their stories (The Desert Princess, The Shepherdess, Daughter of the Nile, and The Queen of Sheba), so maybe I need to read those to get better closure, but I found their stories dissatisfying in the context of The Heart of a King.

My other difficulty was the fact that Solomon spoke love poetry (essentially, passages from Song of Songs) to each of these women when he wooed them, and yet he didn’t seem to love any of them with the depth his words implied. At times it even felt as though he knew he was doing lip service rather than giving expression to his heart. I’m not sure I can quite put into words how that made me feel about Song of Songs—perhaps disillusioned?—but it wasn’t a feeling I welcomed.

No, it hasn’t escaped my notice that the probable author of the world’s most famous love poetry was also married to 600+ women—hardly the idealistic ‘one true love’ scenario—but I would have much preferred to have felt that he genuinely believed the words and his love each time he spoke them, even if he did speak them to more than one woman throughout his life.

I’m a huge fan of biblical fiction and have enjoyed many of Jill Eileen Smith’s books in the past, but this one definitely left me with mixed feelings.

Posted 3 April 2019 by Katie in Word Nerd Wednesday / 1 Comment

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Posted 24 May 2019 by Katie in Christian Fiction, Fantasy, First Line Fridays, Speculative / 10 Comments

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Happy Wednesday, word nerds! This week’s Word Nerd post has been inspired by a comment I got yesterday on one of my previous posts: Flat Out Like a Lizard Drinking. In that post I made use of the phrase ‘ten to the dozen’ meaning to go at a rapid pace, but a commenter yesterday pointed out that to convey the idea of speed, surely it would be more appropriate to say ‘twenty to the dozen’—or at least, a number that is greater than twelve rather than less than twelve.

I immediately saw his point, but ‘ten to the dozen’ was also a very familiar expression to me, so I decided to do a bit of research. It turns out the original expression is actually ‘nineteen to the dozen’. Why nineteen, you ask? Well, many sources say we just don’t know, but there are other sources that claim it goes back to the Cornish tin and copper mines, which regularly flooded. With advancements in steam technology, the hand pumps they used to pump out this water were replaced by beam engines that could pump 19,000 gallons of water out for every 12 bushels of coal burned (much more efficient than the hand pumps!) Some people question whether such an obscure example could really have given rise to such a well-known phrase, but it’s the only explanation I was able to find.

Considering the phrase is most commonly associated with talking (someone talking nineteen to the dozen), it’s quite possible the expression simply refers to someone who speaks nineteen words for every dozen your average speaker would use, but that still leaves us with the question ‘why nineteen?’ To which I’m going to have to respond with a shrug.

So, getting back to ‘ten to the dozen’, which is the more commonly heard expression in Australia. Of course, we Aussies are known for being laid back, so perhaps ten to the dozen is as fast as we get! 😆 However, there is a similar phrase, ‘a dime a dozen’, which means something that is very common or easily come by. If you can buy twelve of something for only a dime, they’re less than one cent each.  Since we don’t use the dime in Australia, it’s highly possible ‘dime’ was exchanged for ‘ten’ and then the original meaning of ‘ten to the dozen’ (quite common or easily come by) became confused with the meaning of ‘nineteen to the dozen’ (at a rapid pace).

Who knows? It’s all a lot of speculation with very few facts mixed in. But I’d love to know if you’ve ever used the phrase ‘nineteen to the dozen’ (or some other number to the dozen) and with what meaning.