Re: Idioms (was Website update)
| From: | Yoshiko McFarland <kamos@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 9, 1999, 1:32 |
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Nik Taylor wrote:
> > Two Kanji characters of "Snake-leg" which directly show "to
> > put legs on a snake" in Japanese means to make an unnecessary addition,
> > like "to put a fifth wheel to the coach":) Yoshiko
> Cool! I wonder if one borrowed from the other, or if they both borrowed
> from the same source? I'd suspect Chinese as a source. Does anyone
> know for sure about this?
I think you are right. The source of this Japanese word is from a story
in an ancient Chinese book. There was a competition of painting a snake.
A man was so good and people admired him. Then the man intended to make
it much greater and put legs on the snake of his painting.
I guess the Burmese one was for the painter's intention, and Japanese
word( it's a single word "Da-Soku" )was from the result of the story.
Yoshiko
--------------------------
Yoshiko Fujita McFarland (kamos@sfo.com)
The Earth Language Homepage:
http://www.sfo.com/~ucathinker/earth/english/ehome.htm