Mixed Metaphors 3

Monday, March 31, 2008

Eating Elephants, and other bites and nibbles:
My boss often counseled engineers faced with a big problem with the following good advice. Something like a sports coach telling his team to "play ‘em one game at a time".

"We’re going to eat this elephant one bite at a time."

There were several variations on this, some more confusing than others:

"If you try to eat this elephant all in one bite, you’re going to have a hell of an indigestion."
"This is an awfully big elephant to eat."
"My elephant isn’t this big (hands close together), it’s about this big (hands farther apart)."
"If they bite on that, and want it, that becomes a program."
"Let’s see who takes the bite on that."
"It’s better to have half a cake and eat it and enjoy it, than not to have any cake at all."

Other Metaphorical Mix-ups:
"It’s like pulling the teeth from a hen."
"Life is beautiful, then you die."
"We’re between a hard and a rock place."
"There’s no grass burning under THIS project."
"I’m gonna dig in my feet on this one."
"We have taken care of all of the silver bullets."
"If you can get to first base, it will be a hell of a lot easier to get to second base."