Where does this expression come from? I’ve always thought it was an aviation term, like "push the envelope." But then I started associating it with the Beltway around D.C.
Political/business jargon. The loop is the group of people who are all talking to each other about some plan or other. (Image of information circulating, person-to-person, memo-by-memo.) If you’re out of that loop, you have no influence over the decision-making.
The up side is that it’s not your fault when anything goes wrong.
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#2 date=01/04/03 at 18:53:42]So it doesn’t have an earlier origin, but started as a business expression?
I’ve just had a look in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, and that gives it an origin in the 1990s as "political jargon". The purely metaphorical usage certainly makes sense, doesn’t it?
Um, what? I’ve been staring at your question and trying to figure out if 1) you’re making a joke or being serious and 2) if you are being serious, how is it more purely metaphorical than "pushing the envelope"?
But, whatever, origin found, that’s cool with me. :)
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#4 date=01/04/03 at 20:12:36]1) you’re making a joke or being serious
Being serious.
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#4 date=01/04/03 at 20:12:36]2) if you are being serious, how is it more purely metaphorical than "pushing the envelope"?
Um ... It isn’t; but that’s irrelevant - "pushing the envelope" is a completely different metaphorical expression that has nothing to do with "being out of the loop".
In contrast, the two suggestions you made as possible explanations of "being out of the loop" seemed to be very concrete - aviation loops and roadway loops. I was suggesting that the metaphorical usage was so intuitive I didn’t feel any particular need to go looking for some more concrete explanation, and was wondering if you agreed.
[quote author=granthutchison link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#1 date=01/04/03 at 18:46:56] . . . The up side is that it’s not your fault when anything goes wrong.
Grant
However, that doesn’t mean you won’t get the blame!
[quote author=granthutchison link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#5 date=01/04/03 at 20:21:04]I was suggesting that the metaphorical usage was so intuitive I didn’t feel any particular need to go looking for some more concrete explanation, and was wondering if you agreed.
I understand what you meant now. But actually when I first heard this expression it really baffled me, and I had no idea what it meant and needed someone to explain it to me. So for me this particular expression is not one that I understood intuitively when I first heard it, as opposed to an expression like "It’s all Greek to me," which does intuitively make sense to me.
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#7 date=01/04/03 at 21:20:56]So for me this particular expression is not one that I understood intuitively when I first heard it ...
I understand that, otherwise you wouldn’t have been asking for its origin. What I was asking about was the connection between the metaphor and the "metaphand" (to steal a word someone else coined). Once the source of the metaphor was given to you, did it seem intuitively correct? That is, did it dispose of any residual feeling that the expression had to have come from some other, more concrete, source?
If I am understanding you, which I may not be - once the source of the metaphor was revealed to me, as in yesterday when you told me it was political jargon, did it seem intuitively correct? Sort of, but not really. I just don’t think politicians are smart enough to think of anything on their own. And the source, for me, has always seemed to lie in aviation or perhaps an engineering term.
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#10 date=01/05/03 at 12:33:59]What is a "metaphand"?
Isn’t it intuitively obvious?
A "metaphand" is the the thing a metaphor signifies. The word was coined in a literary or philosophical context, but I’m embarassed to say I can’t remember by whom.
Its construction ignores the true etymology of metaphor, but has a pleasing result, I think.
It treats metaphor as if it were constructed from metaph- and -or - a thing that carries out the action of "metaphing". By this line of thought, if there is a metaphor, then there can be a thing it "metaphs" - the metaphand, to use an old Latin-derived suffix.
[quote author=dgale link=board=idiom;num=1041710600;start=0#12 date=01/05/03 at 12:54:23]I see. Is this similar in construction to "analysand" - one who is analyzed?
There are thus always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described, which I shall call the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier. A metaphor is always a known metaphier operating on a less known metaphrand. I have coined these hybrid terms simply to echo multiplication where a multiplier operates on a multiplicand.
So I’d missed an "r" out of Jayne’s original term, and conflated his metaphier with the word metaphor itself.
