Saturday, January 30, 2010

Not very well, apparently

Sometimes it's a good idea to look a phrase up before you use it:

to stare (someone) down, out: to stare at someone without being first to blink or lower one's gaze, usu. as an expression of resistance or hostility; to outstare.

Sorry, kids. If the Queen City is in Full ZOMG Panic mode, vowing to have the road crews working all weekend to get rid of that official 1.1. inches of snow, it is probably not appropriate to conclude that the other guy blinked first.

Clause of the morning: "Street crews have responded to the snow and sleet by using plows on major thoroughfares." Well, that's a relief.

2 Comments:

Anonymous raYb said...

It looks like the hed writer wanted to use a variant of "stared down the barrel of..." but ran out of space and knowledge of the idiom. Speech gets colorful when the writer has the full palette, so to speak. Looks like this one just had a few of the primary sort and couldn't blend them to his will.

8:57 AM, January 31, 2010  
Blogger fev said...

Yeah, exactly. The Obs was never very good at reminding writers that they had to make sense, though -- tromps on that sense of creativity we want to cultivate.

12:18 AM, February 01, 2010  

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