Mathematical idioms, unspoken quantification and creativity
When I teach creativity, I ask people to quantify concepts around creativity. At first, they’re usually horrified, or — fascinatingly — afraid to even try it out. It’s as if giving creativity a numerical value or ranking will drain all of its lifeblood.
Pie chart, North Carolina style.
I get it. But stay with me here.
We quantify the unquantifiable all the time. It might not be immediately apparent, but once you start listening for quantifications within language, you’ll start to hear it constantly. They come in probably a dozen or so of different forms — measurements, numbers, ranking, rating, spatial placement, mathematics, geometry — but they’re there all the time, without us realizing it.
You’ll hear these quantifications inside idioms or analogies, or even when people talk about emotions or feelings. Lexically, they’re not always related to direct mathematical measurements, but instead, imagery.
My guess as to why these fascinate me so much is that they feel like the English/verbal equivalent of sign language (ASL), a language I used for work in my first career. In ASL, you are constantly putting emotions, emphasis, etc on a spatial, relational, almost mathematically embodied scale. You can draw a cupped hand slowly down your throat for level 1 ‘hungry’ (“Sure, I could do dinner now”), or you can up it to a level 9, and add in facial expressions, or more or faster movements (“Yes!! Dinner! I am absolutely starving!”).
We do the same thing in spoken language, but because it’s not embodied, we don’t notice it quite as much. Sure, you can ‘zero in on’ something, so that one’s pretty obvious. But maybe you’re ‘getting ahead’ at work. Which means to say, you used to be a 2, now you’re a 5 or 6. Covert quantification.
Here’s just a teeny, tiny fraction of how we verbally quantify — numerically, spatially or relationally — without realizing it:
Ground zero; On the dot; Zero in on; Go back to square one
On cloud nine; Seventh heaven; Dressed to the nines
Getting ahead; Go the extra mile; Have the upper hand
Over the top; A notch above; A cut above; Above and beyond
Falling behind; Going backwards; Losing ground
Building a foundation; Break new ground
Measure your goals; Move inch by inch; Moving the goalposts
A thin line; Walking the edge
This is a plus; A positive step in the right direction
Jump off the deep end
Weighing my options
Half the battle
Go figure
Go off on a tangent
Square peg in a round hole
It’s all too much for me; I’m in over my head
Doesn’t add up; Take X out of the equation
At sixes and sevens (confused or disorganized)
Out of one's depth; Plumbing the depths
A bridge too far
Climbing the ladder of success; I’ve got a mountain to climb
Give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile
Cross the Rubicon; Bounce ideas off of someone
I feel underwater; I feel like I’m drowning
Get to first base
Experience first hand
First of out of the gate
No two ways about it
Put two and two together
Play second fiddle
Talk nineteen to the dozen (talk so fast, much is missed)
Out of line; Out of bounds
Vicious circle
Middle of the road
The whole nine yards; Give one hundred and ten percent
Raise the bar; Under the table
In dribs and drabs