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What's a weird saying? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by wuphysics87@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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When examined, or just because it's weird on its own.

Example: Beat a dead horse

You whip a horse to go faster
It dies from being whipped too much
You still want the horse to go faster
You continue to whip it

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[–] egrets@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

Unrelated to hoist as in to lift, despite similarities

It's exactly the same word, as I understand it – in this sense, thrown into the air rather than lifted into the air. We've started using the past participle as the present tense, and created "hoisted" to fill the gap, and the violent/uncontrolled sense of the word is now archaic.