Spread the phrase and assist stop one other lynching of a superbly guiltless word and the household custom it refers to. Tell your friends and colleagues that picnic just isn’t a racist phrase.
Meanwhile, issues usually are not peachy on the campus of SUNY/Albany. The university wanted to honour baseball legend Jackie Robinson by having a picnic. But the college’s equity workplace said this should not happen as a result of the word picnic” referred initially to gatherings held to lynch Blacks. In truth, as one in all their very own English professors (somewhat much less dedicated to historical revisionism than RMC’s Dr. Robinson) identified, the phrase picnic” truly comes from a 17th-century French word that denotes a party at which everyone brings food. But Zaheer Mustafa, the equity officer, nonetheless decreed that picnic” not be used as a result of the purpose is — the phrase offends.” So the college decided to call it an outing.” Then, gay students took objection to that, and SUNY decided to publicize the event without utilizing any noun to describe it.
Alicia, what a wonderful and interesting hub. I’m sorry this one slipped by me in some way. So glad I popped over here to your facet of HP Town. Looks like another HOTD you have here! I love idioms and loved reading in regards to the history of them. I do keep in mind Laurel and Hardy utilizing the one a lot about the Fine Kettle of Fish LOL. I keep in mind commenting one time on a hub about my cat, George, being a pistol, and Annart wished to know what I meant by that, and so I told her it meant that he’s a bit mischievous however not significantly troublesome. At least that has always been my understanding of that idiom and I do not even know from the place I came up with that one, most likely just growing up over the years hearing others say it. Now that I think about it, I can see how one would need to query the pistol half as it is mindless in case you’ve by no means heard the idiom earlier than within the context it’s meant.
Wherever it is performed, picnicking might be one of many supreme pleasures of out of doors life. At its most elegant, it calls for the accompaniment of one of the best linens and crystal and china; at its easiest it needs solely a bottle of wine and gadgets purchased from the native delicatessen as one passes through town. I recall a recent picnic in France the place we purchased rilletes de Tours (in Tours), and elsewhere some wonderful salade museau, good bread, ripe tomatoes and cheese. A bottle of local wine and glasses and plates from the Monoprix helped to make this picnic in a heather discipline near Le Mans a particularly memorable one (Menus for Entertaining, p. 272).
When used as an idiom, a purple herring is one thing that misleads a person and distracts them from the real difficulty or drawback. The purple herring alters a person’s line of thought and prevents them from noticing or considering the true state of affairs. It could occur naturally or be unintentional. It may be a deliberate ploy by a business or politician to turn folks’s attention away from something that displays badly on the company or the individual or that may be controversial. Some writers deliberately use red herrings of their stories to prevent readers from figuring out the conclusion to a plot earlier than they learn it.