Dodge. Noun. A quick movement to avoid something

This post was bothering me so I re-wrote it. Apologies to anyone stuck reading it twice.


The school said my kid doesn't understand idioms, such as (they said), "It's raining cats and dogs" or "You're pulling my leg."

Well DUH, said I. Who ever uses the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs"? Of course he doesn't understand those idioms. They should have asked him to define "yard sale" instead.*

I love idioms. They draw pictures in my mind. One member of my extended family often gets idioms wrong and it makes me laugh: not at him, but at the funny image it brings to mind. Six of one and a dozen of the other, he said, and I imagined one of those old-fashioned scales tipping wildly, with six eggs on one side and a dozen on the other. I don't think that means what you want it to mean, as Inigo Montoya would say.

(Raining cats and dogs: what kind of weather does that describe, anyway? Howling, because the cats and dogs are fighting? Drenching, because the rain drops are as big as cats and dogs? I don't think I get that idiom.)

If the school wanted me to help my kid with integers I'd have to get a tutor, but idioms are easy for me to teach. When we practice spelling I give him a kind of idiomatic background to each word, like so:


Dodge. Verb. To avoid by moving aside quickly.

• Use in a sentence: He tried to hit me, but I dodged out of the way.
• Common idiom: Dodge the bullet.
• Factual meaning: To move aside so quickly that a bullet shot at you won't kill you.
• Idiomatic meaning: To move so quickly that you avoid getting hurt or in trouble.
• Use in a sentence: I thought my mom saw me sneak a bite of that cake, but I dodged the bullet.
• Adjectival form: Dodgy. Evasive, tricky.
• Use in a sentence: I think my son just snuck a bite of that cake. He's a bit dodgy, that one.

Then he pretends to shoot me in slow-motion and I pretend to dodge the bullet in slow-motion, just like in the movies. Just like in the idiom.

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This past Friday I tried to convince my husband (who really wanted to talk about Audis) that concrete language is Ursula LeGuin's genius, as illustrated in this brief passage: "I believe that as soon as wishful thinking or a conscious political or didactic purpose intrude on that credence, they deform it and the story loses plausibility. Wishful thinking gives us the feeble kind of fantasy where everything is easy, and you never have to feed or water or look after the horse you rode all day."

Isn't that great? She says blah blah blah political didactic credence plausibility – what does that even mean? the words point to nothing – and then she tells you about a foolish story in which a person waves a wand and viola! magically, instantly, without effort or consequence, the horse he rode all day is fed and watered and rejuvenated. He lies back in his hammock. Viola. Oh. Now I get it.

*When you crash so hard that your hat goes one way and your goggles go another way and each ski ends up a dozen yards from your point of impact, that's a yard sale.