Throwing red meat on the fire
Posted: January 14, 2014 Filed under: fire, meat, THINGS | Tags: add fuel to the fire, blended idioms, expressions, humor, language, malaphors, mixed idioms, throwing red meat, words 1 CommentThis great mash up of “adding fuel to the fire” (making matters worse) and “throwing red meat” (appease or excite followers) was just heard on the local NPR station, WESA. The speaker may have been thinking of old Boy Scout days of dangling meat on a campfire. Certainly in most cases red meat needs to be cooked, so it makes sense that the two phrases were mixed up in the recesses of the brain. The mind is like a big cookie jar, and sometimes when you pull a cookie out it breaks, and you are left with halves of two different cookies. That is what we do with idioms and phrases, on occasion, and the result is a delectable malaphor. A big thanks to Rob Blackburn for sending this one in!
You beat me to it. I also heard that.