She’s going to kick some dust off the tires
Posted: October 22, 2013 Filed under: ACTION, brush, dirt, dust, kick | Tags: blended idioms, expressions, Hillary Clinton, humor, kick the tires, language, malaphors, mixed idioms, words 2 Comments
CNN studio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hillary Clinton that is. This malaphor was spoken by CNN political reporter Peter Hamby when discussing the Hillary campaign speech in the Virginia governor‘s race. It is a mash up of “kick the tires” (to test something) and I think “when the dust settles” (waiting for things to calm down), although “bite the dust” (to die) might be in the mix as well. Certainly tires cause lots of dust so hence the confusion. A big thanks to Steve Grieme for hearing this one and sending it in.
Malaphors 
When I heard it, it seemed the reporter was trying to suggest that Hillary was trying to dust off her own campaigning skills, and was kicking the tires for her own presidential campaign.
That makes sense. And the two ideas melded together..