So I work at the BYU Evening Classes Office and we get all sorts of interesting people applying for night school. The most interesting (in my opinion) are the international students that come in. When I can understand what language they are speaking, they are most fun to talk to. I had this jolly chap from Australia call in the other day and ask about the application process. After I told him about it I guess he found it favorable because he said "Champion!" and told me he'd start applying right away. Champion!? I think we definitely need to start saying this. I received an email from this same Aussie student asking a few questions about this and that. He told me that he wanted to apply to BYU because his school in Australia has "thrown me a spanner in the works". ....what? I had to look up what that meant and here is what I found:
"Put a spanner in the works"
Meaning: Deliberately causing mayhem.
Origin: 'Put (or throw) a spanner in the works' refers to the calamitous effects of throwing a spanner into the gears and pistons of an engine. It's safe to say that the phrase was rarely called on to describe an actual event and is likely to have been coined for its imagery.
The first record of it in print is in P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves, 1934: "He should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works."
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings
What a great phrase!
No comments:
Post a Comment