Headmaster's Newsletter -- Week 11

Language becomes so much more colourful and richer when it is laden with culture. On a road trip, students will shout “shotgun!” when approaching the School van to see who has dibs on the passenger seat. Few students would know that riding shotgun historically meant that your job was to carry a shotgun and defend the driver and stagecoach from bandits (or that dibs refers to an old children’s game, or that “bandits” literally comes from the Italian “bandito” which means outlaw or someone banished from society for bad deeds), but the expression is far better than “I want the front seat.”

Yesterday I was driving a School van and Stanislav (Grade 11) was riding shotgun. It was fun chatting with him.  As we were returning from boxing practice (a new sport at the School coached by former Olympian and National team coach Wayne Gordon), I asked him about boxing expressions in the Ukraine. For instance, is there an expression in Russian for “punching above your weight class” or “being down for the count”? The more we talked the more I realized how many day-to-day phrases we use that are derived not just from sports, but specifically from boxing. Being “saved by the bell” or “throwing in the towel” or “rolling with the punches” are all boxing terms which have meaning outside the ring.  Given the number of expressions out there, one would think boxing was immensely popular, but despite a slight resurgence for fitness, its participation rates pale in comparison to previous centuries and sports such as soccer and baseball.

Canada has a few iconic expressions. How many times have we said that someone is “skating on thin ice” when referring to something risky or dangerous? Although a saying older than Canada itself, Canadians certainly understand what being “pure as the driven snow” means.  Our metaphors and similes give us our identity. 

Having boxed for many years in the Ukraine, Stanislav certainly “knows the ropes”. When I asked him if pretty girls back home are called “knock-outs” he laughed and said, “Yes, we say that too.”

 

Teenagers are the best!