Why Do We Say “Over My Dead Body”?
If someone says that something will do It is happening “Above their corpse,” this will not happen at all, under any circumstances … or at least not until the person concerned abandons all the opposition that can be imagined.
It is a familiar expression of the total and resistance challenge – but it is carried out from a craftsman. Above my body It is an amazing brutal turn of the phrase to decrease in an informal conversation. So where does such a horrific expression come from?
Assets Above my body
Looking at the relevant photos, it may be tempting to assume Above my body It is a modern invention – but in reality, its history dates back to more than 200 years, to the end of the eighteenth century. The nearest record Above my body In the English Oxford dictionary It is from 1796When the phrase was used in The story of romance English Palace By the novelist James Norris Burur (written unknown as “a young man”):
“Edward forced his way to her, and saved from the people of the soldiers, a very little and very beautiful woman.
In this excerpt from the BreWer story, it is clear that Edward is a chim In fact, as a challenge or death of life or flexibility, Above my body It was a turning point in the phrase called by a number of nineteenth century book, including Samuel Taylor Colleridge (“No, the monster! First on my body, you do not live to see the cursed action!”) And the American novelist Goodia Vincent Huntington (“I had to tell your mother … that the priest should not cross my threshold, for this purpose, unless it is on my body.”
From the craftsman to the pictorial
It will take almost a century before another century Above my body It became sufficiently fixed in the dictionary to start developing to the use of less literally (but not less than Zaidi) as a metaphor. In her notes An American birthday in Paris In 1871, for example, writer Celia Logan Remember How her gate was in a Paris residential building completely determined to keep her warm bedroom in her absence:
“I have noticed heavily in the concrete, “Do not let the fire go out on the top floor.” … ‘I will take care of that! Do you see that arm, those muscles? It will not go out, except on my body! … he tightened his grip, and was proudly moved away … but what is its people! How they rise to their enthusiasm on the fabrics! The fire should not come out, except on his body! Why, a man who goes to the battle cannot say more than that. “
We can assume that Conserge is not a logo that was not In reality Ready to sacrifice his life for the issue of maintaining the bedroom fire, so it was clear that he was using Above my body More than just a special metaphor in particular. But Logan’s reaction to him, and may show the extent of this extremism on the Victorian ears, a few decades before it fell in more metaphorical use. Once you become more firm, however, Above my body I quickly found a place for himself in our language, and it remained a familiar expression (fortunately it was not very literal) about resistance and flexibility since then.
A phrase wandering around
According to Google NgramUsing Above my body It has been steadily increasing since the mid -1990s. Below are some places that you may have seen used.
- in Address and words From Drake’s 2011 album Make care The singer Chantal Criffiazuk includes
- The title of the Nero Wolfe detectives by Rex Stout published in 1940
- Jeffrey Artcher 2021 novel Above my body
- The real crime selection of Wondry
- Black Comedy 2023 Above my body It is directed by Ho Cheuk Tin
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