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kitchen sink
Thread poster: Tom in London
Phil Hand
Phil Hand  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 18:42
Chinese to English
Natural progression Mar 20, 2015

Seems like quite a natural evolution of language to me:

original: to throw/take/pack everything but the kitchen sink

It's already an exaggeration, but once it becomes lexified, it loses its rhetorical edge, and starts to mean simply "a lot".

so then people exaggerate: throw/pack/take everything including the kitchen sink

and then they abbreviate: throw the kitchen sink


As Andy noted, it's very much like
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Seems like quite a natural evolution of language to me:

original: to throw/take/pack everything but the kitchen sink

It's already an exaggeration, but once it becomes lexified, it loses its rhetorical edge, and starts to mean simply "a lot".

so then people exaggerate: throw/pack/take everything including the kitchen sink

and then they abbreviate: throw the kitchen sink


As Andy noted, it's very much like the I couldn't care less/I could care less progression, which I should point out doesn't only happen in English. My wife (Chinese) puts half of her sentences in the negative, following this rule:

She means: Your shoes are by the door.
By a rhetorical tic she phrases many things as a question: Aren't your shoes by the door?
Through long-established use and boredom, she abbreviates: Your shoes aren't by the door.
(in Chinese, that abbreviation just involves lopping a question particle off the end of the sentence)

So she ends up saying precisely the opposite of what she means. I see this as a pretty common phenomenon.

[Edited at 2015-03-20 00:21 GMT]
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Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.  Identity Verified
India
Local time: 16:12
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER
Sad Mar 20, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

Neptunia wrote:


from: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=k&p=5

kitchen sink (n.)

attested by 1824. Phrase everything but (or and) the kitchen sink is 1944, from World War II armed forces slang, in reference to intense bombardment.
Out for blood, our Navy throws everything but the kitchen sink at Jap vessels, warships and transports alike. [Shell fuel advertisement, "Life," Jan. 24, 1944]


I know but in the current electoral campaign in the UK the leaders of all the political parties are accusing one another of "throwing the kitchen sink".... yesterday Cameron said it in the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions.

[Edited at 2015-03-19 21:36 GMT]


It is sad that the Brits are loosing the grip over the last vestige of their past glory - the English language. May be now they should formally hand it over to non-native users of English for safe keeping and preserving what little of use is left in it.

Left to the Brits, English's fate seems to be as good as sealed!


 
laurgi
laurgi  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:42
German to French
question tu French speaking people Mar 20, 2015

Do you think, "ne pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain" = "to throw everything but the kitchen sink"?

 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:42
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Loosing Mar 20, 2015

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

It is sad that the Brits are loosing the grip....


Well, I thought it was time the grip was set free. Time to cut it loose.



 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:42
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
I agree with Phil Mar 20, 2015

Phil Hand wrote:

Seems like quite a natural evolution of language to me


Like it or not, that seems to be the way language evolves - not by fiat but from the bottom up. Common parlance. Osmosis. Any day now I expect to start saying "phenomena" instead of "phenomenon".


 
Georgie Scott
Georgie Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 11:42
French to English
+ ...
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water Mar 20, 2015

laurgi wrote:

Do you think, "ne pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain" = "to throw everything but the kitchen sink"?


L'anglais peut se comprendre très littéralement si j'ai bien compris: "de jeter tous sauf l'évier à quelqu'un"
*pas trop littéralement quand même, j'en doute que nos hommes politiques seraient capable de lever un évier

[Edited at 2015-03-20 08:48 GMT]


 
Ty Kendall
Ty Kendall  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:42
Hebrew to English
Laughing out loud.... Mar 20, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

It is sad that the Brits are loosing the grip....


Well, I thought it was time the grip was set free. Time to cut it loose.



I quite agree Tom.


 
Natalie Soper
Natalie Soper  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:42
French to English
+ ...
Piling on Mar 20, 2015

It seems to be a common occurrence nowadays to add on to phrases like this - a colleague of mine described someone a few weeks ago as "throwing the pram out as well as the toys." Clearly the person in question had "thrown his toys out of the pram" and then some - maybe people nowadays feel like the original phrases aren't intense enough? It's an interesting evolution in language in any case.

 
Danik 2014
Danik 2014
Brazil
German to Portuguese
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Maybe just a typo... Mar 22, 2015

...that was immortalized:

"to throw (EVERYTHING BUT) the kitchen sink"


 
Linda Li
Linda Li
United States
Local time: 05:42
English to Chinese
Me too Mar 23, 2015



[Edited at 2015-03-23 04:40 GMT]


 
Preston Decker
Preston Decker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:42
Chinese to English
Me too Mar 23, 2015

The dangers of having two people in the same household on Proz:I accidentally posted this comment under my wife's Proz account a bit earlier.

MollyRose wrote:

I never heard of "throwing all but the kitchen sink," but I've heard people say that when they packed their car (or luggage) for vacation, they would pack, or take all but the kitchen sink. Maybe the throwing is just in UK?




This is how we always used this. Every summer we'd head up North for a week on a mountain lake, with the car completely full of odds and ends, canoes and paddleboards tied on top of the car, etc., and my mother would say " Looks like we've taken everything but the kitchen sink again". I've never heard the throwing version before this discussion--interesting!

[Edited at 2015-03-23 04:45 GMT]


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:42
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Here are some recent examples Mar 23, 2015

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100250631/to-survive-the-tories-must-throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-ed/

<
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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100250631/to-survive-the-tories-must-throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-ed/

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/boris-johnson-says-tories-throwing-8791792

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/18/budget-2015-george-osbornes-best-jokes_n_6893586.html
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Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.  Identity Verified
India
Local time: 16:12
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER
Excluding your parents Mar 23, 2015

Curiously, parallel idioms exist in other languages too. In the case of some of the Indian languages I know, if people make too elaborate a packing, or take too many things on a trip it is said, you have put everything in except your father and mother, or, you will find everything, except your father and mother, in your bag!

I wonder if similar idioms exist in other languages.

These phrases explain common human actions, which is why we have them in many languages, and d
... See more
Curiously, parallel idioms exist in other languages too. In the case of some of the Indian languages I know, if people make too elaborate a packing, or take too many things on a trip it is said, you have put everything in except your father and mother, or, you will find everything, except your father and mother, in your bag!

I wonder if similar idioms exist in other languages.

These phrases explain common human actions, which is why we have them in many languages, and down the ages in the same language. They may undergo minor changes here and there, but by large they continue unchanged, expressing common human actions.

Some one here had mentioned plumbing in connection with this idiom. It will be interesting to know which came first - the idiom itself or modern plumbing.

If my knowledge is correct, modern plumbing is a recent thing - 18th century at the most. Before that I doubt if any household in England or elsewhere in the world had any of the modern things we see in our kitchens. It may have come earlier to England as industrial revolution and modern civic planning and drainage happened first there, but it would have taken decades and even centuries before these became common fixtures of every home.

In all probability the kitchen sink idiom pre-dates modern plumbing.

[Edited at 2015-03-23 16:06 GMT]
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