The confusion of everyday expressions
Written on 2nd Jul 2015 by Alex Lowery
I’ve noticed that I seem to have a tendency to not only take language literally, but also word expressions in a very odd way.
For example, today I asked somebody “Is it going well?” This seemed to really confuse everyone in the room, & it was replied with, “Is what going well?” But the truth is that what I meant was, “How’s it going?” That phrase more or less means, “how are you?” or “how is life?” But I just worded it in a different way, which confused everyone. Some phrases seem to get worded differently, but there are those that confuse people when they’re worded differently.
The other day I also said, “My eye was caught by something”, which seemed to make everyone laugh. What I meant was “Something caught my eye”, which is an expresssion meaning I spot something that I want to look at. But because I phrased it like, “My eye was caught by something”, this appeared to be an odd way of wording it.
Everyday language is confusing in the sense that some things can be worded multiple ways but other things can’t. I don’t how everyone gets the hang of it.
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