Get Your Goat

Get Your Goat Get Your Goat Get Your Goat By Maeve Maddox Until a reader asked me about it, I hadn’t encountered the eggcorn â€Å"to get one’s goad.† eggcorn: the reshaping of a common word or expression in a way that makes sense to the speaker. The expression is â€Å"to get one’s goat† (not goad). The earliest documentation in the OED is dated 1910. In modern usage, the usual meaning is â€Å"to annoy,† â€Å"to make angry,† â€Å"to cause someone to display emotion.† Here are examples: After Ferrer took office, when opponents really wanted to get his goat, they taunted him as â€Å"Stanley Ferrer.† The name made him seethe. Extreme left liberals and ultra-right conservatives both  get his goat. What seems to get his goat the most is that the recession seems to have knocked away people’s interest in the environment. Maitreya is famous for having subdued his temper through learning ‘patience under insult.’ You simply can’t upset him. Insults, curses, even blows will not get his goat or shake his equanimity.   The origin of the expression is, as they say, â€Å"obscure.† Various creative explanations have been put forth, including one that suggests the expression derives from the practice of giving racehorses goats as companions to keep them calm. The convoluted reasoning is that if someone were to â€Å"get† the goat before a race, the horse would be too upset to run well. If the expression does in fact derive from some connection with the animal–and not from some forgotten slang meaning for the word goat–I think it may relate to one of several associations with goats that exist in our culture. I won’t go into all of them now, but one characteristic is liveliness. The wild playful way goats jump about with sudden leaps and turns gives us the words caprice and capricious. It’s not much of a stretch to associate â€Å"to get one’s goat† with this aspect of goat behavior. I once watched someone try to get her pet goat under control. She looked like someone trying to catch a grasshopper without a net. The expression â€Å"to get one’s goat† could have something to do with comparing the struggle to control turbulent emotions to the difficulty of trying to catch a goat. I have found a quotation that bears out this explanation. It predates the one in the OED. In this example, a union president is taken by surprise when presented with a beautiful commemorative gavel: At the last meeting of No. 16 ex-President Colbert proceeded to get the goat of President Knott. [] Mr. Knott was taken completely by surprise, and it was some moments before he could get his â€Å"goat† under control and thank the members of No. 16 for such a magnificent gift. –The Typographical Journal, Volume 35 (1909). Human beings want things to make sense. Speakers who replace goat with goad are making an interesting mental leap. A goad is a pointed object used to prod animals; ergo, a person prodded with a goad would become angry. Nevertheless, the idiom is â€Å"to get one’s goat.† Related post: The Sands and Hands of Time Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Idioms About Legs, Feet, and ToesWhen to Form a Plural with an ApostropheSentence Adverbs

Comparison Essay on High School and College

Comparison Essay on High School and College Comparison Essay on High School and College Some people may mistake college as a simple step above high school, but an examination of the two levels of study reveals that there are indeed numerous differences between the two. One of the differences is in the nature of classes in college and in high school. In high school classes, assignments and learning materials that are to be used to complete the assignments are provided for the students. High schools also normally have guidance counselors to help students determine what advanced core and elective courses they may be interested in taking, especially as it pertains to preparing for a college or a vocation. In college, the situation is very different because it is the students who are charged with the responsibility to decide the kinds of classes that they should take until they graduate. If a student has challenges in selecting a unit, the student may make an appointment with a course advisor. However, colleges do have counseling and guidance offices to help students look at what they might be interested in as a career and to help them plan accordingly. Even so, college students are rarely given the materials that they need for their study and therefore , unlike high school, must purchase the necessary texts and other learning material. Another difference is that, compared to college professors, high school teachers tend to be more accommodating towards their students. For instance, high school teachers tend to be more interested in knowing the name of each and every student in their class while college professors rarely relate names to the faces of their students. Also, high school teachers are more likely to closely monitor the grades of their students, ensure that all the students access the required notes, find out why a student may have missed a class, and even remind the students of assignments and future examinations. High school teachers are also more likely to accept a late submission of assignments or even call a student’s parents to inquire about a student who may have missed class. On the other hand, college professors rarely pay attention to the attendance habits of their students and do not make any effort to ensure that all their students pass or score good grades in their subjects. If a studen t misses a class, a college professor is unlikely to follow up and give the student the notes he missed. Instead, it will be up to the student to figure out from whom to get the notes that he missed when he did not attend class. Finally, it is not uncommon to meet a college professor even after graduating from college and not be recognized by that professor, unlike the case of high school teachers who remember some students long after graduation. In high school, it is very easy to get one-on-one time with a teacher because all that one has to do is to schedule a time before or after school. In college, one has to book an appointment in order to have a one-on-one time with a professor, and it is not always a guarantee that after booking the appointment, the professor will keep the appointment. You can buy a comparison essay online at essay writing service. You will get a superior-quality custom compare and contrast paper written from scratch!