whiskeyrobot replied to your post: Boots and Straps:

Yeah, but that’s also the nature of idioms.

I understand the post-modernist deconstructionist/reconstructionist approach to language, how it’s fluid and changing and a living breathing organism full of hearts and lungs and life like a zebra or whatever, but I do not understand why it has to be taken for granted that it’s totally ok to change the meaning of an idiom/axiom into something that actually makes no sense. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps!  Go ahead and give it a try!  Jump into some quicksand and try to pull yourself out by your bootstraps. It just doesn’t make any sense. 

When someone says ‘these people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ they’re saying these people should do something that won’t work.

It’s ridiculous and totally nonsensical in the way everyone is trying to use it, it literally means the opposite of what they are trying to say, and so no, I don’t accept it’s new ‘meaning’. What I accept is that people are misusing it en masse, and as we proved time and time and time again, just because a bunch of people do something at the same time does not make it sensible, or natural or normal.

Whatever.

I’m in a shitty mood this morning and it’s a terrible day to be in a shitty mood because I have srz bznz and I guess I should go and work on that.