We used Temi to auto transcribe this, then Dan went through and checked it based on the show notes. He tried really hard on it, but this kind of stuff isn't his specialty. So if you notice anything confusing, please comment on this post so Dan can look at it and clarify anything.
Shauna: 00:00 Welcome to bunny trails, a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. I'm Shauna Harrison
Dan: 00:05 and I'm Dan Pugh. This week we're going to celebrate the same thing that many countries are celebrating across the world. Love.
Dan: 00:16 So to celebrate, we're going to do our best to talk about several idioms about love, but first, one of my biggest fears - because I don't know much about this holiday because I don't really celebrate most holidays - and I suddenly had this fear as I was writing this episode, that what if this is only an American thing?
Dan: 00:42 So as an American who is trying not to be the standard pretentious American, I wanted to research and see if anybody else celebrated Valentine's day before I was all like, you know what, nevermind, we're not going to do this.
Dan: 00:56 But it turns out actually a lot of places celebrate How... Valentine's Day. I almost said Halloween. I don't know why I said that. It is, it is a big deal in the United States. So in, in this is according to the National Retail Federation, which is a United States based group that measures all of our capitalism, that's how we measure our holidays. So in 2009, more than 60 percent of adults planned to celebrate Valentine's Day, but for 2019 in a study they just completed, that's dropped to just over half of adults. However, Spending for the holidays continue to rise is projected to reach more than 20 point 7 billion with a b dollars US dollars this year.
Dan: 01:40 So if you fewer consumers are celebrating Valentine's Day, but those who do are spending more and the national retail federation says that, for people who are doing something on Valentine's Day, there are going to average $161 and ninety one cents or ninety six cents this year.
Shauna: 01:58 That's a lot to spend on one day, right? Yeah. Listen, I'm all about celebrating your partner or whoever, whatever love things like I'm all about that. But yeah.
Dan: 02:08 Well it was interesting. They also talked about that. I didn't include here, but they also talked a little bit about people that were celebrating the fact that they're not you alone or having anti Valentine's Day party and those types of things and they, so they didn't include those numbers in here, but they did say that they got lots of responses about those types of things.
Shauna: 02:26 How many do you think that there are a lot of kids who wouldn't have taken part in a, you know, like teenagers or whatever, who wouldn't have been a part of a survey to be considered a consumer?
Dan: 02:38 I have no idea. I didn't read about what, what their methods were. That was a little bit too far down the rabbit hole for our word history podcast since I'm currently talking about the history of, I don't know, holidays, which is outside of her bailiwick anyway.
Dan: 02:55 So let me just hit some high points about some other countries do. So Denmark has been celebrating Valentine's Day since the early nineties according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. So it's a new holiday for them. Uh, they exchange pressed white flowers called snow drops and lovers cards, much like what we do while the lovers cars were originally transparent cards, uh, which showed a picture of the card giver presenting a gift to his sweetheart. A, the term is now synonymous with just any card exchanged on Valentine's Day. So much like our, our, you know, greeting card.
Shauna: 03:26 Okay. Is that super cute or what that you like are holding up a transparent card and handing them. Is that the idea? I have no idea. It sounds so sweet. Okay. See now I've gone the other direction. Hang on.
Dan: 03:38 Don't get too far into it because some men also give women a joking letter which consists of a funny poem or a rhyme written or on intricately cut paper and signed only with anonymous dots.
Dan: 03:49 So, you know, they get a little fun out of it too. Now in France and it's. And it's been said that the first Valentine's Day card originated in France when Charles, who was the duke of Orleans sent or Orleans, I don't know. Uh, it's spelled like New Orleans, but I don't know how they would have said it anyway, so he sent love letters to his wife while in prison and the tower of London in the 14 hundreds. Now I don't have any idea if that's true or if the Catholics get to claim Valentine's Day cards because of a one guy... I'm almost certain the Catholics don't get to claim it. No offense Catholics, but like you guys for 300 years said you didn't know anything about any of the guys named Saint Valentine or Valentinus or whatever. And then suddenly now suddenly everybody knows all these stories about like they're in jail and all this and all that.
Dan: 04:34 I'm just like, I'm not buying that. But uh, anyway, I don't have any idea where it started. This is not a, a, a holiday history podcasts. So I didn't look too far into it, but it is still, it is still a popular thing in France, in South Korea. There are variations a of the holiday that start in February and move through April. So on February 14th, it's up to the women to woo their men with chocolates, candies, and flowers, but, and that goes for up to a month and then on March 14th it switches and it's a holiday known as white day when men are not, not only shower, they're sweethearts with chocolate and flowers, but also upped the ante a bit with a gift. And then black day is April 14th where many singles morn their solitary status by eating dark bowls, have a black bean paste noodles, you know, I happen to like black beans and I happen to like noodles and I would probably like this black bean paste noodles as well, but it just sounds gross, right?
Dan: 05:33 In the Philippines they've been celebrating, uh, in recent years, February 14th by having mass, a wedding ceremonies and uh, so they have hundreds of couples that will gather at malls or other public areas around the country to either get married or renew their vows and mass. Just a couple more Italy, one Italian Valentine's Day tradition was for young, unmarried girls to wake up before the dawn to spot their future husbands. It was a belief back in ye olden times, uh, that the first man that a woman saw on Valentine's Day was the man she would marry within a year. Of course today, Italians celebrate Valentine's Day with GIFt, gift exchanges and I almost said, GIFt exchanges,
Dan: 06:17 uh, between lovers and romantic dinners, much like everyone else does. One of the most popular Valentine's Day gifts in Italy as a small chocolate covered hazelnut, wrapped with a romantic quote printed in four languages, which sounds awful to me because I hate hazelnuts. So,
Dan: 06:36 I know. Well, I included it because it was 4 different languages and I thought that was kind of interesting. And last but not least, South Africa celebrates Valentine's Day with festivals, flowers, and other tokens of love. It is customary for women in South Africa to wear their hearts on their sleeves on February 14th. Like literally they will pin the names of their love interest on their shirt sleeves. And then there are some men who find out who their secret admirer is because somebody saw their name on a person's shirtsleeve.
Shauna: 07:06 That's really cool. Um, and I can just imagine how, I mean having teenagers, I'm like thinking, okay, uh, all these, all these girls running around with a name pinned to their sleeve, how crazy could that go at a high school?
Dan: 07:22 Well, I mean, we have, I'm thinking in the case of my kids' school, I mean there's, there's a lot of people who would not follow the traditional idea of a relationship. So maybe there'd be, I would, I would think it very quickly everyone would be doing it. So, um, yeah, but in this case, so I did use what we would consider be a, you know, a turn of phrase that wearing your heart on your sleeve, which doesn't make any literal sense really. But this actually is from Shakespeare and Othello. A, this is the first time that we saw it used in this manner. We saw the phrase used in, in, not really the phrase like this, but some concepts that may have meant the same thing. But, uh, at where it says does, not long after, but "I wear my heart upon my sleeve for doves to peck at"
Shauna: 08:09 Oh Shakespeare, Shakespeare, man, uh, you know, it's not like he has, I mean, we've talked about this. A lot of his words aren't new, you know, he does, he uses phrases other people have used. It's the way he puts them together. It's always like, man, dude, like, come on. Sounds awful.
Dan: 08:27 The other thing that I saw from South Africa that I thought was very interesting is they attributed or many attributed the concept of pinning the hearts on the sleeve to the ancient Roman festival known as Lupercalia and I had never heard of this. So I wanted to research it a little bit and it was festival prior to St Valentine's Day and then, and then the Catholics and said, well, we would like to have thing a much like it is. Well, there's, let's have a, a thing that we can celebrate while others are doing that. And then, you know, the obviously Valentine's Day is persistent, but, uh, um, the valentines feast I should say. But anyway, so Plutarch had wrote a description of Lupercalia uh, during the early Roman Empire time and one a one passage stuck out to me and I laughed about it. So many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city, naked for sport and laughter, striking those. They meet with shaggy thongs. *Childish laughter*
Dan: 09:29 So of course thongs were strips of leather in those days. Not, not as I a picture it, these young men and women running around with their, uh, I imagined, I imagined college age, inebriated students running around with shaggy thongs, naked, slapping people with them. That is what went through my head.
Shauna: 09:49 It's funny, I was going to say no, these were noble youths, but actually I'm not sure.
Shauna: 09:58 Although, if you've read some. Any middle English stuff then? Yeah, you'd learn that thongs are like - you lash stuff together with it. Are going to talk about idioms then?
Dan: 10:08 So the first thing I want to mention is match made in heaven. Originally, this phrase was actually a marriage made in heaven, meaning an ideal or perfect, maybe romantic union or marriage between two people, a also extended use.
Dan: 10:20 The idea of perfect marriage has been made in heaven, dates much older than our phrase as this 15, 80 example of tests from a John lyerly in the, uh, Eupheus and it says "marriages are made in heaven though consummated in Earth". So there it's got this idea that this concept of marriage made in heaven a much, much older. Of course then our phrase, the first time we see the phrase is used in more of a sarcastic tone in the 17 hundreds, a 17, 27 daniel defoe of Robinson crusoe fame, uh, in an essay called "Conjugal Lewdness" for short. In fact, the original, the original full title of this essay was "Conjugal lewdness or matrimonial Whoredom *More childish laughter*
Dan: 11:14 *Still giggling)* That... that's My favorite essay title ever. "Conjugal Lewdness or matrimonial whoredom". He was of course, later as to rename it for the sake of propriety. The modified title became "a Treaste concerning the use and abuse of the marriage bed". That's still bad right? So in this, in this we shouldn't laugh because this is not a very good essay. I'm so in it, he says, "is this matrimony? Is this a marriage made in heaven?" And so that was kind of the origin of the phrase, he's using it more sarcastically or defiantly here because defoe's take was that contraception in any form was basically murdering infants. And the essay was mostly about how marital relations, using contraception were both morally repugnant and criminal. That's intense. It is intense. Yes. So, uh, I think conjugal lewdness is a good title for what he wants to, was wanting to say.
Dan: 12:12 But that is actually the first time we see this, this phrase in print, uh, and then, uh, we see it by the 18 hundreds having switched in and being used the way we use it today in the way we would think the concept of marriage has been made in heaven will be used today too. So as this example will show June 18, 19 article in the North American review saying "as this was truly a match made in heaven, they lived happily and have children and grandchildren". And since we're just doing a quick run through of, of different idioms today, I just want to give one example of how it's been used today. And there is a book called match made in Heaven by Bob Mitchell, came out in 2006 and it is about a 50 year old Harvard literature professor who has a heart attack. He cries out to God for help.
Dan: 12:58 And to his surprise, God appears. God Asks Elliot the lead character why his life should be spared and decides to offer him to chance to save his own life by playing a golf game. But this is not your ordinary golf game. His opponents turn out to be selected from heaven by God and includes such famous historical figures is Shakespeare's, socrates, Beethoven, Moses, Freud, and Picasso among many others. \
Dan: 13:25 Yeah, no, I, I, yeah, I'm putting, I'm adding it to my, to be read list, uh, because it's the genres that it fits into. It says humorous fiction in sports fiction. So it's, it's a, it's a sports fixture and this guy's a sports writer. So he's reading basically writing. Yeah, I, I'm, I am going to check this book out.
Shauna: 13:42 I got to say, sports writers are always really, um, really fun because there's a lot of action like the play by play field that you went from sports, whether they're writing about sports or not. So it's always entertaining to read.
Dan: 13:55 Well, let's take a quick break to say thanks to our sponsors and then we'll come back with several more idioms.
Shauna: 14:00 Today's show is sponsored by our patrons on Patreon special thanks to our lagomorphology interns, Charlie Moore and Pat Rowe for sponsoring this episode. Patreon.com is a subscription service that allows you to support content creators you love. It's free to sign up and follow along if you are in a financial situation that allows for monetary support, you can get additional perks for as little as $1 a month. Features like early access to episodes behind the scenes content bonus episodes and more are all available at Patreon.com/bunnytrailspod.
Dan: 14:35 Love is blind, is the concept that you don't see anything because because love, love blinds you to the downsides of a person or you can't, you don't see their flaws or you don't see the bad things happening when you're in that fluttery ha. The concept of I'm in love, right? So the Oxford English dictionary points out that the con, the conception of love is blind or as causing blindness is widespread and it's found in antiquity in both Greek and Latin literature. So it would be incredibly difficult to find the concept of where love is blind came from, but it has been around for probably as long as we have had humans. However, we can pin down the first time we really see the phrase love is blind used in a, a written sense in a story style. And that was from chaucer. This was in late 13. Hundreds, early 14 or yeah, or late 13.
Dan: 15:30 Hundreds, early 14. Hundreds depending on, uh, when, when some of these things were written and in chaucer's Merchant's Tale, he says "for love is blind all day and may not see". We see it again a couple hundred years later in Shakespeare's merchant of Venice, "love is blind" as he says, a strangely short, sweet, and to the point for Shakespeare.
Shauna: 15:51 Yeah, there's probably an entire paragraph and one after that. Discuss love though, you know?
Dan: 15:57 Oh yeah, yeah. Uh, but I, I, I do find this to be a thing that there's definitely, you hear the concept of puppy love, which we were not including here today. Uh, but when you hear the concept of puppy love sometime maybe next year for Valentine's Day and you know, that's the kind of teenager your first love and your light. You're just, you're just completely smitten. You know, it's, it's a sensation that you've never really felt in this way before.
Dan: 16:21 And uh, sometimes I feel like that love is blind. Is, is a way to attribute that to adults who have felt love before. But then they're also, now I'm doing dumb things.
Shauna: 16:33 Yeah, See I feel like puppy love is like sweet and cute. Love is blind is dangerous. It's like, okay, so that person's not a good person and you should not feel this way. I like maybe feeling that way..
Dan: 16:48 I think that's harsh. I think that the whole concept of the reason it's been in, in the whole human nature since human history began is because everyone falls victim to this when you first fall in love. And that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it may not be a good thing either, but everybody falls victim to this at some point. Yeah. Yeah. I think.
Dan: 17:13 So one example of it in a modern culture is, uh, the song love is blind by Eve off the album, let there be eve, rough riders, first lady. And this was released in 1999. I was going to read some of the lyrics, but I actually cannot find a section of them that doesn't have the cusses in them. Uh, and I, and you know, this is a family show and I already said whoredom like three times and another time just now. So I feel like that's as far as I want to go.
Shauna: 17:42 Gothca. So probably says something to the effect of love is cuss cuss blind, cuss cuss cuss cuss.
Dan: 17:48 I'm saying curses over and over again. Poophead. So, uh, anyway, no, it's a song about a love gone wrong and how she was blind and didn't see what a bad person this person was. Anyway. So let's move on to another one and that could be ambi-guous. Ambiguous. Let's move on to another one that could be ambiguous as well. And this is all fair. In love and War I really preferred ambiguous, ambiguous. Um, so, uh, again, we talked, I mentioned John Lyly earlier, uh, about wearing your heart on your sleeping, in Eupheus and a 15, 78 in this exact same piece of work. He says, "any impiate may lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless." So this is the first time we kind of see this concept in print where they're talking about the idea that love is lawless and, and it ties really nicely into love is blind I think because some of the concepts are the same. And then we see in Don Quixote, which is probably where this phrase gets popularized, and "that love and war or all one as in war, it is lawful to use slights and stratagems to overcome the enemy. So an amorous strifes and competencies imposters and juggling tricks are held for good to attain the wished end".
Dan: 19:11 Yes. Well, and of course Don Quixote was written in Spanish, so the original Spanish version also has a version like this "el amor y la guerra son una misma cosa"... sorry Spanish speaking people for my horrible Spanish.
Shauna: 19:30 It is really the Don Quixote is beautiful in English. And hearing it in Spanish is beautiful. I don't understand the entire thing, but it is definitely beautiful to listen to. So, uh,
Dan: 19:40 yes, I have seen don quixote in both Spanish and English and I prefer it in Spanish actually. Uh, it is just, I obviously, anytime you can listen to a show performed in its native tongue, it's probably going to be better than a. If you have a translated version, even though the translated versions can be very good to agreed though. But yes, absolutely. If you have the opportunity to see Don Quixote performed, uh, in Spanish, absolutely do. That is, it's a beautiful show anyway. So we also see this in a, the 17 hundreds with William Tavenner in the Artful Husband, and he says "all advantages are fair in love and war." So then we see just specifically this phrase being used there. Uh, and then I like, I like an 18, 45 example by George Payne Rainsford James. I'll say that again. George Payne Rainsford game. James, crap I missed it. I should've just stuck with the first time you went right through. I know. Well, here's the deal. If they, if I don't mention it at all, if I just cut it, they'll never know that I said it.
Shauna: 20:40 That's tricky. I like this guy's name though, because it goes first Name, last name, last name, first name.
Dan: 20:47 I know it's sort of a weird shifted palandrome. Uh, no. So I think it's credits show GPR James, uh, much like Jrr Tolkien, you know, was not uncommon. It's not uncommon at the time. Anyway. His book A Smuggler, A Tale he says "in love and war, every stratagem is fair they say" which is almost a quote from Don Quixote, but like just shifted a smidge. Don Kwix Ott! And here's the other thing about it, all's fair in love and war, and I want to read you the definition from urban dictionary, which if you are not a, if you are not at least 50 years old, you should probably not get on urban dictionary. And if you are over 50 years old, you should not get on urban dictionary anyway. So on urban dictionary, the top definition is "nothing is out of bounds when it comes to loving and warm. The rules of play are acceptable in war. If someone says all is fair in love and war, in other words, in a war between love and hate, anything is acceptable or fair. The only two areas of life in which you can be forgiven for doing absolutely anything. Our love and war, for example, if someone kills one of their relatives on the battlefield, it is more acceptable than murder. Usually. "
Dan: 22:07 I think the last sentence is really what ties it together, the concept, because if you think about it like that, you know the atrocities happen on the battlefield of course and all these things, but while you you will still have to deal with the mental and psychological components of the things that you did or saw on a battlefield, but it is rare so long as you were following the standard conventions of war that you will then be held in some weird sort of an accountability for that like, Oh, you've murdered someone and now you're going to go to jail for their murder because in war everybody loses. But when the concept of this being is that if it's all fair in love and war, that love is so much more worth fighting for then war, it could be forgiven that you. You took strong abnormal actions because you were so in love. Right? Which is not to try and excuse anyone, but the concept is that's where. That's where this takes you taking it to an extreme. That's kind of what the phrase, all's fair in love and war is, is meant to convey, is that for someone within love, they feel so strongly about it that they would be willing to do things that are outside the bounds of societal constructs, much like people are forced to do in war.
Shauna: 23:27 Yeah. It's pretty deep and honestly, I mean we see that happen a lot and I think people are forgiving of others when they are in love.
Dan: 23:39 Yeah, absolutely. I mean to some extent more so than normal than they normally would be. So last meeting that I want to talk about today is love at first sight. And this is the, uh, according to the Oxford English dictionary, the action or state of falling instantly in love with someone whom by extension, something which one has never previously seen. So Shauna, do you believe in love at first sight?
Shauna: 24:01 Okay. I want to, I want to believe it's a thing because I'm so much a romantic, but I don't know.
Dan: 24:16 Which I experience often. Nice. So, uh, this one, uh, also love it first site, we're going to go back to chaucer to kind of give us our roots here. So again, late 1300 1400s, depends on how you look at it Chaucer, Poem Troilus & Criseyde "How myght it be That she so lyghtly louede Troylus Right for þe firste syght." It's very sweet. And then, uh, later in the late 15, hundreds, 15, 93, uh, Marlowe in Hero & Leander "Where both deliberat, the loue is slight, Who euer lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?"
Dan: 24:59 Yeah, it's a, there's a rhymy things. I'm all Dr Suess over here. I love it. And then let me give you an example of a modern piece of, of, of work that uses love at first sight. And this one is actually, we don't talk about canvas style art very often on the show. So I wanted to take an opportunity because there's a beautiful acrylic painting on canvas of a pink, red and yellow Avignon Parrot Tulip. And it slowly opening up. I'm going to put a link to it on the Patreon and that everybody can see, but it is a beautiful piece that is called, it's called love at first sight and uh, it's, it's made by the artist, uh, Kamille Saabre and she is a phenomenal, phenomenal painter and she's from Estonia. And uh, her bio on her website says that she's not after copying the beauty of nature, but aims to inspire the viewer to awaken the lost desire for purity, innocence, and maturity. Although the paintings do not depict human figures, they boldly celebrate and communicate a real enjoyment for the full circle of human life in all its stages. That's awesome. Yeah, she, her work is all over the place. This piece actually I think is for sale. Love at first sight will include a link on the Patreon so that everybody can see this picture. And if you really want to purchase it, you can, um, it is a four figure a painting.
Dan: 26:23 Honestly, I would buy this painting. I mean, if I just had had, um, if, if I could afford to pay for it, what the artist's believes it's worth and I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I, um, it would, it's just not a thing that I can financially do. Um, so I, I guess to start wrapping this up, I never really celebrate Valentine's Day. It's not. I mean, in fairness, I don't really celebrate any holidays. You already know that about me, but uh, I, that's just not really my thing. I'll go and do the whatever other people are doing things. So somebody is gonna have a party or something, then I'll probably go, um, I might not stay long because I'm an introvert. I'll do whatever and then leave again. Or I'll stand in the corner of the room and eat chips and dip or something l
Shauna: 27:07 You're like a societal introvert as well as that you're like, I'm not even going to celebrate this holiday, not on my own and not in a group.
Dan: 27:14 I don't do well, I do Thanksgiving though. I, I, I will own up to that. I'm a big fan of giving things and I love the idea of having a big meal together and uh, that is the way to get me to come to your celebration is to have a big meal. So I will, uh, especially if I get to come help cook, then I'm, then I'm in. I'll even help do dishes, what we're done. So that's winning. That's right. That's right. So, uh, but I do, even though I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day, I do appreciate the idea that we should continue to celebrate love. I think we should do that every day, but I love the fact that we have a day where we can do that. I'm not a huge fan of the capitalistic way in which we do in America, but I guess if that is what feeds other people have for the rest of the year, then fine.
Dan: 27:53 Whatever, um, you know, live in live and let live, I guess. Um, and while I'm also not an overtly religious person, I think that there is something, a kind of fancifully romantic in the concept of a patron saint of love that's looking out for mere mortals to ensure they find their soul mate, which is also a weird thing because I don't believe in soulmates. So I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, Dan, the Downer over here. All right, well that about wraps us up for today. Uh, I'd also like to say a big thank you to those of you who posted your reviews for the show. It's the easiest way you can support your favorite podcast and best of all it's free. If you have a suggestion for an idiom or another turn of phrase or just want to chat, you can catch us on twitter and instagram answer gram instant, instant gram. You can catch us on twitter or the instant Graham's a and occasionally even on, on the book of faces all at @bunnytrailspod Or you can get links to everything we do at www.bunnytrailspod.com.
Shauna: 28:50 If you want to hear more about Valentine's day related things, check out the "your brain on facts" podcast, or if you are all funned out on Valentine's Day, we recommend the "cutting class" podcast where they'll be talking about something entirely unrelated. Both can be found wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We'll talk to you again next week and until then, remember, words belong to their users.
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