How about "taking the mickey"?

My point here is that having a problem with colloquialisms is never worth the effort. Mainly because it's a throwing stones in a glass house situation. Everyone has them, and they never make sense.

The irritation occurs only because a turn of phrase that actually does make sense has been taken, altered through time and inobservance into a phrase that means its perfect opposite while the usage has changed not one iota.

It is a stupid thing to get annoyed about, but fuck it, that's not going to stop me.

Also this

I've seen that video, and I have to say that as funny as it is, it is a stupid fucking video. "Holding the fort" makes no more literal sense than "holding down the fort" does. None. But you all know what it means, so you can stop being pedantic cunts about it. Partly because I've heard the ridiculous rapings that the British like to call "English", but I'm not a big enough douchebag to call you out on them.

I reckon Oanst is the most awesome word ever :D

It's not meant to be literal, it's a metaphor. A straightforward one that actually makes sense.

But believe me, this thing is not always directed outward toward American English. There's plenty of fun made inwardly too. Especially with the north.

Bullshit. Nonsense. I thought better of you than this. "Holding down the fort" is just as much a metaphor that makes sense as "holding the fort". The entire point of the video was to point out that these things don't make literal sense. You don't get to then tell me that it's okay for him to offer an alternative that also makes no literal sense. No. Fuck that. Don't do that shit.

I never said anything about literal sense in regard to metaphors.

You didn't have to. That's what the video is about. I know that he's a funny guy. I personally love Peep Show, but it's still a stupid video that doesn't accomplish what it wants to. It merely makes him look ignorant.

He's famous for his rants, but there isn't actually an expectation for any great insight. Just articulate ravings about something that irritates him without the inconvenience of an opposing view, for no other purpose than to entertain while earning a tidy sum from the sponsor.

Yes. But he was wrong. Just say it.

I don't think he was wrong. Ridiculously anal about something inconsequential, yes, but that seems like an essential requirement for making it as a comedian, especially when one's shtick is an incredible- and not entirely fictional- neurosis.

But let's face it, language is filled with these oddities that don't make sense when you think them through, and the only way we make sense of it is through the clumsy and inadvisable process of adding yet more meanings to perfectly straightforward words, and this becomes most prominent when you start learning a foreign language, marvel at the literal translations of common phrases, and then turn that scrutiny upon the English equivalents. When broken down into their components, language (or at least those we dare to understand) fundamentally doesn't make a whole lot of sense, which is odd when you consider the perfectly reasonable assumption that the one quality that a language should have is to make sense.

There are plenty of phrases far more bizarre than those we're worrying about here, yet we do not mention, I suspect, for the sole reason that there are not variations of that phrase between our two similar yet opposing cultures. Therefore I propose a compromise: where such variations exist, we recognise that one is objectively more sensible than the other in some quality (such as the spirit of the metaphor or the literal meaning), if either indeed is. This does not oblige anyone to use one over the other, but I do get to (quite rightly) comment that one is particularly more ridiculous than the other, and you get to (quite rightly) call me a punctilious prick for doing so. Deal?

Uh-huh. Okay. He was still wrong. And no. One is not more ridiculous than the other. They equally make no literal sense.

It's a perfectly useful military term referring to stayinh where you are, retaining said fort and keeping it safe. Have you never heard the phrase 'Hold your position'? I'll eat my hat if you've ever heard someone say 'Hold down your position'.

Did you guys just spend a whole page arguing about grammatical prescriptivism?

You guys.

I love this guy.

i love him to:D

I don't.
Cause thats Just gay.

I love Phlebitides.
If you right click misspelled words, you can get a good list of stuff. i.e. Trifluoride.

saccharides. clitorides. saccharides. Florrie.

I've never heard these before. :'D

And being just gay is bad.

Actually, I have. I've heard "Hold your position" used to mean "stay put", and "hold down the position" used to mean "defend the position". Either way, it doesn't matter, though. That's not the point. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work as a metaphor, or that one is more widely accepted as a metaphor. I'm saying that the British usage of it without the "down" makes no more literal sense than the American usage with the word "down". And anyone saying different is either lying to themselves because of some strange insistence that their colloquialisms are better than our colloquialisms, or lying because they don't want this video that they like to be wrong, or they are just plain stupid.

I like the word *punch* oh and nausea

there aren't many cool german words. except maybe
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft which means
figure it out yourself

I don't have anything against colloquialisms, it's just saying them wrong in a way that completely reverses the meaning while continuing to use them in the same context that I don't like.

Christ, we haven't been talking about your thing for ages.

I don't like to cause an argument and then completely fail to join in.

My point was simply that the word 'hold' has one more definition than you are aware of and thus 'hold the position' does make literal sense whilst 'hold down' does not.

Lucid

Tranquill. Dusk.

It does if the position is one where you're on top.

'Hold' can also mean 'keep'. Like 'placeholder' or 'I hold the rights to this film'. I don't really see the confusion here.

Melanoma & Punctual.

At what point did the word hold come to mean "defend", though? Again, I'm not debating that the word is used in those ways. I'm saying that it isn't the literal translation, and if it isn't the literal translation then it all comes down to you and I knowing what it means because of popular usage, which is the same with "holding down the fort".

Hold the fort = keep the fort = do not lose the fort = defend the fort.

i fucking shit on the fort.

how do you lot like that? huh? do you like me shitting all over your debate? yeah?

You sure told us.

To be honest this is really the most interesting thing in this thread right now.

I'm offended by that.

Well man, I contributed a little to this little corner of the forum, but it's pretty much like reading the dictionary for fun.

Absurd & Naturalist.

Chthonic.

Philistine, and inordinate.

Incarnate.

When I was ten some neighborhood girl and other friends taunted me by saying that. I punched her in her face.