Hi! I’m Joel and this is The Glossary, a bi-weekly supplement to Learned. This week, we're cleaning our slates.
subscribe | unsubscribe | comments | twitter | about
Happy New Year! Here we go: a new year, a fresh start, and a clean slate. Only, who's slate is it and who's job is it to keep it clean?
One of my favorite aspects of language is the tendency of idioms to shift towards the incomprehensible over time. A well-cited example is "raining cats and dogs." There's a more-or-less-true etymology but there is nothing in the idiom itself that explains just why "raining cats and dogs" is synonymous with "torrential rains."
Clean slate (or blank slate) is edging ever closer to that cliff. The phrase comes to us from the days when a piece of chalk and a blackboard were the most efficient means of recording changeable information, like debts owed to a bank or nautical course markers. Being able to clean or wipe the slate meant that new information could be recorded easily, cleanly, cheaply, and quickly. As the idea of public schooling became prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries and children used small, individual blackboards to work their lessons, the phrase picked up its metaphorical meaning of starting over or starting fresh.
And so, while 19th-century speakers might have intuitively known what blank slate meant, modern language learners might need to have the meaning explained to them. Conversely, the rise of tablet computers might inadvertently succeed in pulling the idiom clean slate back from obscurity. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that the physical act of clearing your screen in preparation for a new lesson might become a metaphor used in conjunction with fresh starts or new beginnings.
So there you have it. It's a new year, so let's clear our screens and get ready for the days ahead!
Stay strong, stay focussed. Learn something.
subscribe | unsubscribe | comments | twitter | about
Joel
Sources:
Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms
Collins Cobuild Idioms Dictionary