tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 05 13:33:50 1995
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Re: Re[4]: }} jIjot 'ej jIQuch
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Re[4]: }} jIjot 'ej jIQuch
- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 13:33:50 -0400
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Fri, 01 Sep 95 14:57:14 EST
>On Fri, 1 Sep 1995 charghwI' wrote:
>>> (Please realize that I'm playing Devil's advocate here.)
>IOW I understand that <Hot> is for physical touching, I'm just throwing in other
>ideas.
Makes sense; it's how we grow to understand those ideas...
>>> "To touch the sky."
>>
>>Just exactly what is this supposed to mean in English? I can't
>>translate that which I do not understand.
>Okay. (Well at least it's better than what I had originally had,"to touch the
>face of god.") When you were a kid did you ever try to reach up and touch the
>sky? It's used more as a euphemism these days. People took up flying so they
>could "touch the sky". I wish I could think of a source. (I vaguely remember
>that the poem Reagan read after the Challenger tragedy, said something along
>those lines.) And yes I know that no self respecting Klingon would use a
>euphemism.
It's a metaphor. It doesn't literally mean "touch" anything. It's an
expression meaning "to reach or attain some high spiritual level or lofty
goal." The metaphor works by making you imagine someone literally reaching
out and putting a hand on some physical "sky", implying the person is
waaaay high up to do this. Or placing a hand on the face of God, implying
the person is within arm's reach of God and feels very close to divinity or
something. So using "Hot" for this kind of "touch" I guess would be prett
good, at least insofar as you can trust people to interpret it
metaphorically. Not because "Hot"'s meaning is in any way extended, but
precisely because "touch" here *does* mean physically putting a hand or
finger on something... and the whole phrase is really metaphoric.
~mark