There are a number of phrases that many of us use in everyday life to convey a particular meaning, proverbs that people use to express themselves. Think of phrases such as “two wrongs don’t make a right” or “better late than never” and you’ll know where we’re coming from.
The reason so many of us use them is that they express what we believe to a fact based either on experience or simple common sense. Many of them have Biblical origins and have become accepted as pearls of wisdom handed down through the generations. We no longer even question them.
But all is not what it seems with some of these sayings – in fact, a few actually mean the opposite of what we think!
Here some that might just surprise you:
Money is the root of all evil. Makes sense right? It suggests that money is the cause all the wickedness in the world. Actually it’s a misquoted phrase from the Bible: “the love of money is the root of all evil”. The suggestion was never that wealth caused evil, but rather that the emotional reaction to the possession of money, particularly when it begins to control us, is the issue and what causes concern.
Blood is thicker than water. This one initially had a completely different meaning to what it does today. Its original form was “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. Historically, “blood” was taken very literally in that it specifically referenced the blood shed by soldiers in battle. It suggested that the connection between comrades on the battlefield was more powerful than the connection between family members.
Children should be seen and not heard. The phrase was actually “Hyt ys old Englysch sawe: a mayde schuld be seen, but not herd” which can be found in a 15th-century collection of sermons written by John Mirk, an Augustinian clergyman. A “sawe” was a medieval word for a proverb or a saying. In fact “mayde” could denote a child, an unmarried young woman or even a celibate man – so not just children at all!
Carpe Diem. The familiar Latin phrase that commands us to seize the day! The full saying is “carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero,” which means “pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.” So rather than simply ignoring the future & living for the moment, the saying in fact was supposed to encourage us to do as much as we can in the present to be mindful of the future.