Yeah, that one is also infuriating to hear people misuse.
The entire point is not that its a small problem, its that its a big problem.
Along the same lines:
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
This was originally written as an obviously physically impossible absurdity, a modern equivalent would be the ‘plug the power strip into itself for infinite energy’ memes.
Yet it is instead used to mean … its time for you to do a lot of hard work, and then you’ll be in a better place.
When it instead was originally used to describe an extremely dire situation that cannot be solved by doing … the sentence above.
A lot of people forget the second half of this old aphorism.
Same for ‘a few rotten apples spoil a bunch’.
Yeah, that one is also infuriating to hear people misuse.
The entire point is not that its a small problem, its that its a big problem.
Along the same lines:
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
This was originally written as an obviously physically impossible absurdity, a modern equivalent would be the ‘plug the power strip into itself for infinite energy’ memes.
Yet it is instead used to mean … its time for you to do a lot of hard work, and then you’ll be in a better place.
When it instead was originally used to describe an extremely dire situation that cannot be solved by doing … the sentence above.
still means the same thing, just used incorrectly by dishonest and truly wretched people.