There are other sayings that have nails in them, and for those, it is quite easy to figure out the meaning. For instance, "You just hit the nail on the head." Then there is the famous, "You just drove the last nail into the coffin." Easy stuff, right? A lot easier than "Dead as a doornail."
You're asking yourself why I got off on to this path. Believe it or not, I lost a good hour's sleep last night with this thing. I awakened to go to the "biffy" and while there the reality of the "doornail" attacked me. I then realized that although I had used the expression fairly often on the road of life, I had no idea what a doornail is. The fact of the matter is that I have seen many doors that look like the one in the picture at the top, but I never realized what the decorative studs were meant to represent. I never realized that doornails are centuries old. They were placed in doors to strengthen them and make them more difficult to penetrate. They were purposely longer than the door was thick so that they would go clear through the door material. They were then clenched so that they could not be easily removed, thereby making the door safer and stronger. Now, it should be clear to you all that a clenched doornail is never going to be good for anything ever again...therefore, DEAD.
NOW, you know what I now know. I did not know it last night. I repeat, It kept me awake for a good hour. I have had many nights like this. Trying to figure things out that were impossible to learn because of the invincible ignorance of the moment. These days though, I have a computer and I know that in the morning I can educate myself. It is a good feeling. Much better than the feeling I used to have when I knew that I was going to have wait until I got to the University before I could ask my Brazilian friend about a language torment that had kept me awake a good part of the night. I was fortunate enough that the night when I got the news that Jack Kennedy had been shot in a language that I was woefully deficient in at the time, I was close enough to a source who could help me out. I didn't sleep a wink that night though, not for mental stress but for trying to keep the short wave radio focused on developing news from the United States. One way or the other, sleepless is sleepless.
This is embarrassing. I must have heard this expression when I was younger. I thought it was "doorknob", I thought to myself at the time, why the doorknob, what so dead about that? Why not dead as a rock or dead as a stone. I dismissed the idea like, "Oh well another language." In my language we use something so different, "in the land of the gods". So dead you are no longer physical. This is deep and old Palauan. This generation is not using it. I heard my dad use it and my mom and aunts and uncles during my younger days. My daughter who is in Palau now is not using it. None even of the same age group here or there are using it. In my clan, we were deeply expressive. There was always someone at the house during my younger days listening to my dad talk. He was an artist, a musician, a sculptor. He knew the culture like the back of his hand knew all the legends and songs.
ReplyDeleteOne of those. Your mind is so inquisitive. Most people will shrug it off and go to bed. I will make a plan of correction and go to bed. Easier said than done. Thanks for the information and knowlege. Glad these things dont take space in my brain. I can keep storing.
Justa Kubarii