When Idioms Turn to Fossils

Every idiom was once a metaphor somebody meant. Break a leg. Bite the bullet. Turn a blind eye. These were images, once — vivid, particular, rooted in a specific body doing a specific thing in a specific world. Then repetition did what repetition always does: it wore the image smooth, until what remained was a token, a counter, a move in a game.

This is how language fossilises. Not through neglect, but through success.

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