The Gift that is Toronto Star Headlines

I taught two classes this week, both fairly advanced ESL adult students. It was supply teaching both times, which can sometimes be a wee bit of a challenge because the students are always wondering, "Where's our teacher. And who is this guy?"

So I find it often helps to have an ice-breaker before getting into the assigned work.

And it is at times like these that I just want to kiss the people who do the headlines at the Toronto Star. Because one of the headlines of the print version of the newspaper on Wednesday was this...

Low Blow From Loblaw
Boss Gets Farmers' Goat

First I have the class try to figure out and explain what the headline means. They try to grapple with it and sometimes there are some very interesting answers. One student thought it had to do with low prices because of the supermarket reference of "Loblaw".

And then, as I explain it to them, we're going to translate its meaning because, while it is English, its meaning isn't clear unless you know a lot of idioms.

Idiom 1: a "low blow", which I explained to the class comes from boxing and it's a sports-based idiom. To demonstrate, I have one of the male students come up to the front of the class and we put our hands up, as if we were boxing, and then I jab at his nether regions with a low blow. We then discuss the meaning as an idiom when someone says something unexpected, cruel, nasty and/or unnecessary.

(Oh and as a side note: "necessary" and "occasion" are the two toughest words in the world for me to spell. Big blank spots with both of them. Typing them is fine because spell check will do the voodoo that I can't do, but when I have to write them on the board in front of class, I'm always thinking "sunuvabich you have got to be kidding me".)

After we get the explanation for a "low blow" established, we move to

Idiom 2: which the headline re-words as "gets farmers' goat".

I have the students scour the article to see if there is any mention of a goat in the story (thankfully, there isn't). We then read the first five paragraphs of the article to see if we can ascertain the meaning from what's been written. And the meaning is kind of there, but it's difficult to get past the idea of a *goat* (because the goat has become the elephant in the room) and where is the goat and, if there is in fact no goat, why is it being mentioned?

Finally we get to the idiom and the notion of "getting someone's goat" and, at the time, I couldn't explain the origin of the phrase but I told them it's when someone does something to anger or bother or unexpectedly irritate someone else. As for the definition itself, I was surprised to find this at the website "Idiom and Expressions"...

"The most likely explanation for the origin of this slang has to do with horse racing. It had been a common practice to put a companion animal, mostly a goat, in the stall with a restless racehorse, which was meant to help calm the horse. Obviously, if someone managed to steal the goat before the race, it irritated the owner because it could result in the horse losing the race."

... so now I know (although, that's a more difficult origin to describe to students compared to just having someone come up and then proceed to shadow box them "below the belt").

And then we deal with the pun (although it's probably just a playful juxtaposition rather than a pun) of putting "Low Blow" and "Loblaw" side by side, and then the second pun that turns that second idiom into "Gets Farmers' Goat".

All of this, as an ice breaker with the class, from the front page headline of a newspaper. Eight words turned into a half hour lesson and discussion.

And the fact that the first paragraph of the article starts with "An off-the-cuff remark by Galen Weston..." was just the icing on the cake. Oh, and get this, yesterday's lesson plan supplied by the absent teacher: a worksheet on idioms including "big headed", "pig headed" and "hen pecked" plus so much more.

Low blow, big headed, pig headed, hen pecked, get someone's goat...

It doesn't get much better than that.