I am reading a book called How to Sit (stop sniggering) in one of my occasional doomed attempts to stop being so inclined to get worked up about things that don't really matter. The book recommends sitting, observing your breathing and saying to yourself, "My body is mindfulness itself", but I fall at the first hurdle, as I keep realising I'm saying to myself, "My body is mindlessness itself", which is probably more truthful than the authorised version and sends me off into distracted amusement, from whence my mind wanders back into its usual frenzied paths.
My latest object of frenzied seething is a phrase I never heard until at most 18 months ago. Now it is everywhere - people say it to me in conversation, they write it in emails, it appears in articles and, to my mind, it adds absolutely nothing to the content of any of those forms of communication.
The phrase I'm referring to is "Here's the thing."
The thing? What thing? Where? Here? Where is here?
The thing about "here's the thing" is - or rather "here's the thing" about "here's the thing - that I have never seen it preface anything positive and nice. In my experience, no-one ever says something like, "Here's the thing - I'd love to help you", "Here's the thing - I'd like to invite you round to tea". No, "Here's the thing", goes with, "I'd love to help you, but I'm afraid I cannot", "I'd like to invite you round to tea, but I'm not going to."
I think, in fact, "Here's the thing" is a holding pattern phrase for when someone is scrabbling around in their mind for an excuse for not doing something they perhaps ought to. Or have I got it wrong - is the phrase less unpleasant in its meaning than I've been imagining? I'm never ever going to start using it but could it be that "the thing" in "here's the thing" (and my inability to grasp the meaning of that principal noun is part of my objection to the phrase, as every single time I encounter it my mind gets stuck on trying to work out what "the thing" means) is just shorthand for the now outmoded (hurray) cliche, "Elephant in the room"?
I suppose that one could consider it equivalent to the naval "Now hear this" or the legal "Oyez, oyez". I don't think that I use the expression much, but it seems to me that I've heard it for a good deal longer than 18 months.
ReplyDeleteIt is said that after his stroke, understanding that he was dying, Henry James said, "So here it is at last, the distinguished thing". Perhaps the next time somebody unloads "Here's the thing" at the end of a long stretch of words, you could use James's words in an exclamatory tone. But [here's the thing] I fear that few who heard the phrase would recognize it.
That is a wonderful phrase of James, thank you for it. From now on I will reply to everyone who uses "Here's the thing" with the question, "The distinguished thing?"
DeleteThis is one of my bugbears, along with beginning sentences with a superfluous "So". The chief offenders seem to be young American males, but it's spreading. It has replaced the far more tentative IMHO.
ReplyDeleteI've posted several curmudgeonly comments to these chaps, pointing out that the 'thing' may not be the thing they think it is, if there is even a thing in the first place, which is doubtful. So if they want to do their bit to fight against the 'post truth' brigade, they should stop presenting opinions as immutable facts.
My wife is a great source of information about annoying trends, as she works with three people in their 20s. Her current irritations include the phrase "For sure" and their pronunciation of almonds in which the 'al' sounds like cow.
On Twitter, I've noticed that several British men of my age (i.e those of us who remember shillings) have started using the word "Shtick". I've no idea why.
One I can't decide if I hate or like, that I think may be the Australian equivalent of "For sure" (I'm assuming it's a reply to your wife saying, "Could you do this by tomorrow?") is "Too easy". I think I love it, sort of.
DeleteIt is rather an ominous bit of verbal filler, but as well as prefacing bad news, I sometimes hear it used to introduce some insight which the speaker imagines, rightly or wrongly, to be news to the listener. It's also proliferating, not least among spokespersons and politicos, as a simple holding clause or prevarication, or as a way of lending fake gravitas to a bland utterance.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing - it seems to me that no one needs a formulaic way to introduce a positive statement. You just say it and feel good. But people feel bad about saying bad things, so they lean on verbal crutches like "here's the thing".
You said everything I ought to have said in my post. Do you mind if I delete your comment after cutting and pasting it into my blog and owning it as mine?
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