The Age newspaper recently carried a headline which read Turnbull Wades Into Asylum Debate. This error is increasingly found in the electronic media, where it is common to hear of politicians, sports stars, and others wading into various discussions, problems, debates, etc.
The correct expression is weigh in. It comes from boxing, in which a competitor is required to weigh in before the fight. Likewise in horseracing, jockeys are required to weigh in before competing. Thus, weighing in is an official step before participation in a competitive event. (The competitors are also required to weigh out afterwards, but this does not seem to have fallen into the vernacular.)
It is not hard to see how the slide occurs. The metaphor of weighing in is an obvious fit for a person’s entry into a debate or issue; and to say that the fighters weighed in sounds identical to the fighters wade in. The visual imagery of a person wading into troubled waters fits readily enough with the idea of joining a controversy, and carelessness does the rest.
It seems to be a fairly recent error: Sidney J. Baker in the 1966 edition of The Australian Language recognises weigh in as a metaphor derived from boxing, but does not note wade in. What was interesting about the Age headline is that the error has now made it into respectable print and will probably stick.
Perhaps it does not matter, except to purists. It is fascinating to see colloquial expressions twisted out of shape so that they lose contact with the metaphor from which they spring, yet remain intelligible as part of our common agreement about meaning. The best example of this is the increasingly common the proof is in the pudding. This is more often heard than the original the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
In the original expression, the meaning comes from the fact that proof is used in the early sense of test. Thus, the test of a pudding is to eat it. The original expression naturally conveys the idea that the worth of a thing is found by putting it to its intended purpose. It is understood this way by convention, even though the speaker may have no idea that the phrase depends on an archaic meaning of the word proof. As a colloquial expression, it has an accepted meaning that no longer depends on understanding the individual words which comprise it. As a result, the expression itself can be mangled without losing its agreed meaning. Thus, the proof is in the pudding is understood as representing the original, the meaning of the original is commonly understood, and that meaning is imprinted on the mangled version. All this despite the fact that, as a group of words, the proof is in the pudding means nothing at all.
Wade in and the proof is in the pudding are examples of a curious phenomenon: they are expressions whose literal meaning does not correspond to their understood meaning. And in a contest, the understood meaning will always prevail, despite the moans of the purists.
Developments in technology make it likely that some other expressions will join that group. Some people still speak of dialling a telephone number. The reference is, of course, to that earlier species of telephone which used a circular dial that could be rotated, by means of finger-holes, to establish connection with another telephone. They are rarely seen these days. On digital phones, the idea of dialling a number is anachronistic. But it will probably remain and be understood, even by people who have never seen the old-fashioned type of telephone.
A parallel expression is to ring someone, and we are urged to buy various ringtones to make incoming calls more intrusive and irritating. But ring is hardly apt to describe the noises made by modern phones, especially mobile phones. It is possible to buy ringtones which comprise the popular songs of more than a thousand singers — from Thriller by Michael Jackson to LeToya Luckett’s Not Anymore, remixed by DJ Mealdue. One ringtone website offers a selection from categories which include Country, R&B, Christian and Gospel, Classical, Latin, World Beat, and Sound Effects. But phones still ring.
Even in the age of digital clocks, clockwise remains meaningful and is generally understood. And in the age of word processors, people still type up a document. But typing comes from the typewriter, and the link between the typewriter and the modern computer is limited to the layout of the keyboard. Beyond that, they have nothing in common. The activity once accurately described as typing is sometimes referred to now as keyboarding. Although this has the advantage of literal accuracy, it is ungainly and will probably not stick.
These new uses of old words follow a pattern which is so common that we tend not to notice it. For example, the dashboard of a car is so named because, originally, it resembled the dashboard of a carriage in appearance and function. According to OED2, it was originally ‘a board or leathern apron in the front of a vehicle, to prevent mud from being splashed by the heels of the horses upon the interior of the vehicle’. To dash was ‘To bespatter or splash (a thing) with anything (e.g. water or mud)’. The dashboard can be seen on very early motor cars in about the same position as it had in horse-drawn carriages. It was a natural place for instruments, because it was readily visible to the driver. It moved upwards to improve the visibility of the instruments, but kept its name.
If you suggested to anyone today that the purpose of the dashboard was to keep mud from splashing the driver’s clothes, you would be thought mad. In earlier times, mad people (in London at least) were likely to be admitted to the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, in London, which had been founded as a priory in 1247. By 1403 it was specialising in the care of lunatics. It was originally in Bishopsgate. In 1676 it moved to new buildings in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke, and in 1815 it transferred to St Georges Fields in Southwark. Long use of its name wore its pronunciation down from Bethlehem to Bedlam. From that we have the metaphorical meaning of madness and confusion, which is the only meaning currently associated with it. How many people at Christmas time would understand how close is the link between the chaos of the festivities and the event being celebrated?