Take the plunge

Some people just seem to have a screw loose. Skittish as you might be reading this, bide your time to interrupt and while you do so piggyback on this post, whose contents run the gamut from commonplace to the tech-related vocabulary.

So what about it? Could you follow me? If so, please head to another blog—I don't suppose there is something new for you below. Otherwise, c'mon fellow, let's have a bit of fun.

Firstly a word or two, as usual, on the provenance of such a flood of unusual expressions (here I am imagining you've never seen them), for the whole lot (sic) was found at the same place—the book Computer Networks, written by Andrew Tanenbaum.

I am still surprised to have found such a fountain of unknown at a tech-book. Delightedly surprised. Customarily, the most those books offer, after you've read some of them, is some there-and-there new expression, for generally there are few completely new ideas being presented. (Books on programming, I must say, tend to display a more informal tone, which leads to a higher density of new expressions per chapter...)

But let us pull up our sleeves and get down to work. What is a screw? My dictionary (Cambridge Advanced Learner's) brings a rather funny definition (there's more to it than I actually transcribed below. the main point here is to give you folks an idea of the feeling which stuck me at the time I read it),

A thin pointed piece of metal with a raised edge twisting round along its lenght and a flat top with a cut in it, which is used to join things together, especially pieces of wood.

After that, I was on the verge of turning o google's image search when the penny finally dropped. (I did the search anyway, it couldn't hurt...) The description was fine, and the expression is identical to one in portuguese: to have a screw loose is to be mad, or to have lost the ability to reason well.

Heading on, I can say someone (or some animal) is skittish if he or she is nervous and easily frightened, or (only for people) if they're likely to change their minds frequently.

When you bide your time for doing something, you wait patiently until ou have the opportunity to act; by its turn, to piggyback is to be carried on the back of someone, with your arms round their neck and your legs round their waist (I used that expression figuratively, above). Finally, as for run the gamut, it is used to refer to a range of things (read the first paragraph again if you didn't graspt it, and I am sure you will then).

Surprised? I was, when I learned these expressions' meaning at first (then a second and a third time, as I couldn't help forgetting them... an issue I think is now solved as I have myself written them down). What is really awesome is that I happened to come across two of those very brand new (to me) expressions elsewhere the same week I've seen them for the first time! I heard run the gamut on an Obama's interview, while a professor at university happened to say piggyback during a lecture!

Small world, that's all I can say, for so many expressions... and yet that's a big stimulus to keep to studying English, don't you think?