I wish I could read between the tea lines
Posted: January 24, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art Rooney II, expressions, humor, idiom, idioms, language, malaphor, read between the lines, reading the tea leaves, WDVE, words Leave a commentThis was heard in a morning radio show (WDVE) interview with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ owner, Art Rooney II. Mr. Rooney was talking about the wide receiver, Antonio Brown, and what will happen to him in the future. This is a nice conflation of “reading the tea leaves” (predicting on little bits of information) and “reading between the lines” (perceiving an obscure or unexpressed meaning). Both idioms pertain to perceiving or predicting, and both contain the word “reading”. “Lines” and “leaves” are also similar sounding words. This is similar to my prior posted malaphor, “read between the tea leaves” :
A shout out to Mike Ameel for hearing this one and sending it in.
Read between the covers
Posted: November 8, 2012 Filed under: THINGS | Tags: between the sheets, blended idioms, don't judge a book by its cover, expressions, malaphors, mixed idioms, read between the lines, words 3 CommentsCertainly the speaker meant to say “read between the lines” (to detect a hidden meaning), but apparently was also thinking of either books or beds. If the former, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” (don’t prejudge something or someone from the outward appearance) comes to mind as books and covers are associated with reading. Also as suggested by my “ol’ pal” “cover to cover” (reading a book in its entirety). However, perhaps the reader was thinking of sleeping or other bedroom activities, conjuring up the slang idiom “between the sheets” (having sex). If so, I hope the speaker was wearing a Freudian slip.
Malaphors 
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