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Put a bug in your ear
 
Tim
Posted: 17 September 2004 07:52 AM   [ Ignore ]
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PUT A BUG IN YOUR EAR - "put a bug (or flea) in (someone’s) ear, put a bug (or bee) in (someone’s) bonnet, to suggest, hint, reveal, around 1900. This seems to be a later version of to earwig."

earwig - pester, insinuate, influence with words, from the earwig insect (first recorded in English in 1000), which was thought to enter the head through the ear." From "Listening to America" by Stuart Berg Flexner (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982).

[hr]

A phrase I used just yesterday…

-Tim

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For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more… and realize that men’s hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words. - JRR Tolkien

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edman
Posted: 17 September 2004 08:34 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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I’ve always understood earwigging to be eavesdropping. But on reflection, I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever actually heard it used outside my own family!

Ed

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My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. &&- Ernest Hemingway&&

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Tim
Posted: 17 September 2004 09:04 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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And sorry for putting this in the wrong thread!!  ...‘swhat I get for trying to do this whilst I worked earlier today! ;D

-Tim

...on the other hand, I didn’t know that ‘earwig’ was considered a VERB as well as a NOUN.  So we can say someone ‘earwigged’ someone into doing something, instead of the more debatable ‘convinced’... raspberry

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For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more… and realize that men’s hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words. - JRR Tolkien

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Kari_Britan
Posted: 17 September 2004 10:49 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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hmmmm, canst this possibly be the origin of bugging a place?  As in "The FBI bugged Bugsy’s ‘Bugout’"?  
or maybe not

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the fine line &≬ sanity and madness gotten finer?&&        —George Price

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Garzo
Posted: 23 September 2004 11:56 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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I had a lovely cup of coffee this morning. All day I’ve been moronically humming ‘Java Jive’ with various syncopation effects! This phenomenon, a tune stuck in one’s head, is also called an earwig.

- Garzo.

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Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.&&-The First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 13.

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Coemgenus
Posted: 31 October 2004 03:42 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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[quote author=edman link=board=what;num=1095454321;start=0#1 date=09/17/04 at 17:34:11]I’ve always understood earwigging to be eavesdropping. But on reflection, I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever actually heard it used outside my own family!

"Earwigging" for "eavesdropping" is perfectly normal (British) English to me. "Hey you, stop earwigging and mind your own business!"

Curiously, though, my Collins dictionary defines the verb "earwig" as "(Archaic) attempt to influence by private insinuation" (never come across that) and the noun "earwigging" as "(Informal) a scolding or harangue—I’ll give him an earwigging about that" (never heard that either). Doesn’t give the "eavesdrop" meaning at all.

Strange, too, how French "avoir la puce à l’oreille" (to be uneasy, suspicious) has quite a different meaning from "to send someone away with a flea in his ear".

C

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Fundamentalism: the terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun - H.  Mencken

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