Re: Common World Idioms - Christophe, Gary

Steve Cooney wrote:
> As Gary Shannon quite straightly put it: "..."red
> handed" means "with blood on your hands" and that
> being "caught red handed" means being caught between
> the act of comitting mayhem and the nearest bar of
> soap..."
Nowadays it seems to mean simply "caught in the act" (which may be either
criminal or merely socially ~personally disapproved-- "I caught him
red-handed drinking up my Napoleon brandy!")
>
 So something like the word "hao3" (good)
> which written as the radical of "mother" and "child"
> together -- supposed to kindle a concept of
> "goodness."
Indeed, that's the explanation given in "You Too Can Write Chinese", a book
I got for Xmas around age 11-12.
It included obvious ones like "jen" 'man'' , your basic stick figure; "ta"
'big' basic stick figure with outstretched arms; sun, moon etc.
>
> Coincidentally, something for Gary on Darmok:
> http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Biblespeak.html
>
I wish there'd been some examples.  Does it involve actual phrases, like
"The mother before Solomon" or "Jesus at Cana" ? Or merely catch phrases
that are widely known (if you paid attention in Sunday School)-- "The wise
and foolish virgins", "Go thou and sin no more," "Death, where is thy
sting?" etc.

Poor Ecclesiastes has been raided for countless book titles, most of which
have little to do, AFAICT, with the subject.