A flying buttress: a rant.

Relations between Great Britain and the European Union are a bit prickly at the moment.

It doesn't help that the present prime minister, who did her very best to please everyone, has resigned, and that her place will soon be taken by someone else whose main selling-point is not trying to please everyone.

To make things even worse (as far as the European Union is concerned, anyway) it's likely to be Boris.

Boris Johnson is an eccentric sort of a character, wild of hair and even wilder of metaphor. The word buffoon is often applied to him, not entirely unfairly; but then the British prize humour above almost anything else (and I think we have a point, here: on the whole, if it isn't true, it isn't funny) and so we're rather looking forward, I think (if through our fingers) to the fun.

But though Boris's use of language is captivatingly flamboyant it doesn't half make difficulties for the poor translators. His assertion, at a dinner in Bratislava, that Britain would become a flying buttress to the European Union cathedral:



photo of Freiburg Minster by Lutz H

- in plainer words, that  Britain would be supportive, but detached - would have ruffled fewer feathers if it hadn't been rendered by the hapless translator as flying bucket.


photo of the artist Buckethead by dIPENdAVE

Still...

...as long as he makes us laugh...

...I think...

Word To Use Today: buttress. This word comes from the Old French bouterez, thrusting arch, from bouter, to thrust.