Give the summary of chapter old proverbs made new?
Answers
Answered by
32
Old proverbs Made New
STEPHEN LEACOCK
IT has occurred to me that somebody ought to get busy and rewrite our national proverbs. They are all out of date. They don’t fit any longer. Indeed, many of them are precisely the converse of existing facts.
Our proverbs have come down to us from the days of long ago; days when the world was very primitive and very simple and very different; when people never moved more than a mile and a half from home and were all afraid of the dark; and when wisdom was handed out by old men with white whiskers, called prophets, every one of whom would be “retired’ nowadays by any firstclass board of trustees as past the age-limit of common sense.
But in those days all the things that were said by these wise old men, who had never seen a motorcar, were gathered up and called proverbs and repeated by all the common people as the last words of wisdom. The result is that even today we still go on repeating them, without realising how hopelessly they are off the track.
Take, as a first sample, the proverb that is perhaps the best known in our language: Birds of a feather flock together.
But they don’t. Ask any first-class naturalist. If the wise old men had taken another look they would have seen that the last thing birds ever want to do is to flock together. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they keep away from their own species, and only flock when it is absolutely necessary. So much for the birds. But the proverb is really supposed to refer to people, and then it is wrong again. People “of a feather’’ do not flock together. Tall men fall in love with little women. A girl with a beautiful fair skin and red hair marries a man who looks like a reformed orang-outang. A clergyman makes a friend of an auctioneer, and a banker would rather spend a day with a Scotch gillie than with a whole vaultful of bankers. Forgers, in their time off, go and sing in the choir, and choirmasters, when they are not singing, go to the races.
IN short, there is nothing in the proverb whatsoever. It ought to be revised under the modern conditions to read:
“Birds of any particular feather and persons of any particular character or occupation show, upon the whole, a disposition rather to seek out something dissimilar to their own appearance and nature than to consort with something homologous to their own essential entity.”
In that shape one has a neat, workable proverb. Try another: A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Entirely wrong again. This was supposed to show that a young man
who wandered from home never got on in the world. In very ancient days it was true. The young man who stayed at home and worked hard and tilled the ground and goaded oxen with a long stick like a lance found himself as he grew old a man of property, owning four goats and a sow. The son who wandered forth in the world was either killed by the cannibals or crawed home years afterwards doubled up with rheumatism. So the old men made the proverb. But nowadays it is exactly wrong. It is the ro
STEPHEN LEACOCK
IT has occurred to me that somebody ought to get busy and rewrite our national proverbs. They are all out of date. They don’t fit any longer. Indeed, many of them are precisely the converse of existing facts.
Our proverbs have come down to us from the days of long ago; days when the world was very primitive and very simple and very different; when people never moved more than a mile and a half from home and were all afraid of the dark; and when wisdom was handed out by old men with white whiskers, called prophets, every one of whom would be “retired’ nowadays by any firstclass board of trustees as past the age-limit of common sense.
But in those days all the things that were said by these wise old men, who had never seen a motorcar, were gathered up and called proverbs and repeated by all the common people as the last words of wisdom. The result is that even today we still go on repeating them, without realising how hopelessly they are off the track.
Take, as a first sample, the proverb that is perhaps the best known in our language: Birds of a feather flock together.
But they don’t. Ask any first-class naturalist. If the wise old men had taken another look they would have seen that the last thing birds ever want to do is to flock together. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they keep away from their own species, and only flock when it is absolutely necessary. So much for the birds. But the proverb is really supposed to refer to people, and then it is wrong again. People “of a feather’’ do not flock together. Tall men fall in love with little women. A girl with a beautiful fair skin and red hair marries a man who looks like a reformed orang-outang. A clergyman makes a friend of an auctioneer, and a banker would rather spend a day with a Scotch gillie than with a whole vaultful of bankers. Forgers, in their time off, go and sing in the choir, and choirmasters, when they are not singing, go to the races.
IN short, there is nothing in the proverb whatsoever. It ought to be revised under the modern conditions to read:
“Birds of any particular feather and persons of any particular character or occupation show, upon the whole, a disposition rather to seek out something dissimilar to their own appearance and nature than to consort with something homologous to their own essential entity.”
In that shape one has a neat, workable proverb. Try another: A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Entirely wrong again. This was supposed to show that a young man
who wandered from home never got on in the world. In very ancient days it was true. The young man who stayed at home and worked hard and tilled the ground and goaded oxen with a long stick like a lance found himself as he grew old a man of property, owning four goats and a sow. The son who wandered forth in the world was either killed by the cannibals or crawed home years afterwards doubled up with rheumatism. So the old men made the proverb. But nowadays it is exactly wrong. It is the ro
Answered by
0
The summary of chapter old proverbs made new
- The chapter "Old Proverbs Made New" is a short story by Stephen Leacock, a Canadian humorist, and writer.
- In this story, Leacock satirizes the traditional wisdom found in proverbs by creating modern, humorous versions of them.
- He explains how proverbs are changed from time to time with the stupidity of modern people.
- He presents a series of new proverbs that make fun of various aspects of society, including technology, and social norms.
- For example, he recreated the old proverb "Every cloud has a silver lining" as "Every silver lining has a cloud". In this, he suggests that even the positive aspects of life can have downsides.
- He also invents new proverbs such as like "The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but nowadays the proof of the motor car is in the honking" and "A man is known by the company he keeps, but a woman is known by the handbag she carries,"
- Leacock highlights the stupidity of modern life, while also demonstrating the enduring appeal and versatility of proverbs as a form of popular wisdom.
Learn more at
https://brainly.in/question/148272?
#SPJ3
Similar questions