Mixed Metaphors

There's nothing quite like the linguistic carnage of a well-mangled metaphor to remind you that some people should be kept at arm’s length from public speaking. Today’s offering, which I heard a union leader utter - "We need to grasp with nettle by both horns" - is a masterpiece of verbal demolition. It’s as if someone set out to construct a sturdy bridge of rhetoric, then absentmindedly dynamited the foundations halfway through.

Let's break this down, shall we? "Grasp the nettle" is a fine old phrase about tackling something painful head-on - literally derived from the fact that the best way to handle a stinging nettle is to grab it firmly so the hairs don’t penetrate your skin. Logical enough. "Take the bull by the horns," meanwhile, is a similarly bold image, evoking a valiant struggle with a half-tonne of angry steak. But shove the two together, and you get a confused, angry plant-based minotaur that demands to be both clutched and seized in ways that defy nature, physics, and good sense.

It’s one thing to mix metaphors for comic effect, but this sort of linguistic train wreck doesn’t so much illustrate a point as kneecap it. And let’s not forget the grand tradition of similarly brilliant syntactical blunders. Who among us hasn’t been told to "burn that bridge when we come to it"? Or to "put all our eggs in the same basket and hope it floats"? Perhaps we should "cross that chicken when it hatches" or "let sleeping dogs gather no moss."

We live in an age where public figures regularly take the English language out back and beat it senseless with a shovel, yet somehow, these accidental strokes of genius remain oddly endearing. So, in the spirit of innovation, let’s propose a few more delightful metaphorical abominations:

• "We need to swim against the tide before the ship has sailed."
• "Let’s not count our chickens before the fat lady sings."
• "That’s the pot calling the dead horse black."
• "We’re not out of the woods, but let’s burn that bridge anyway."
• "It’s like shooting yourself in the foot to spite your face."
• "I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot bargepole in a haystack."
• "Let’s get our ducks in a row before they come home to roost."

Perhaps it’s time we recognised this phenomenon as an art form. After all, if we can glorify abstract painting and atonal jazz, why not linguistic surrealism? A well-timed mangled metaphor can tell us far more about the speaker than any carefully scripted speech ever could. And in today’s political climate, where we’re led by people who couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel, I say - let them mix, muddle, and mash away. If nothing else, at least we’ll get a laugh out of it before we’re all up the creek without two paddles to rub together.