Birds and their feathers…


It is not uncommon to hear expressions such as “Birds of the same feather flock together.” Come to think of it: it appears logical to reason that birds that share the “same feather” are, most likely, to take flights together. It is at the same time, under the searchlight of logic that, one is quick to debunk the idea of birds having the same feather. Or have you seen such before? Though, I’m not unaware that logic hardly fails. The crux of the matter is that, as logical as logic is, it should not be employed as a ready-made tool for measuring the grammaticality/correctness or otherwise of every expression.
Our attention today is drawn to the above quoted expression, which is a corrupted version of a popular idiomatic expression. According to the Oxford dictionary of English, an idiom is “A group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words.” Idioms are “…natural to a NATIVE SPEAKER of a language”, the dictionary added. This by extension translates to mean that, idioms are fixed expressions that have meanings beyond the combination of words woven together to form them. As such, to the extent that they are fixed set of expressions is to the extent that they don’t entertain any form of addition or deletion; no matter their weirdness. The correct version of the idiom, therefore, is BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER. This is used to say that people of the same sort, character, ideology or worldview etc. are found together[b]Birds and their feathers…
It is not uncommon to hear expressions such as “Birds of the same feather flock together.” Come to think of it: it appears logical to reason that birds that share the “same feather” are, most likely, to take flights together. It is at the same time, under the searchlight of logic that, one is quick to debunk the idea of birds having the same feather. Or have you seen such before? Though, I’m not unaware that logic hardly fails. The crux of the matter is that, as logical as logic is, it should not be employed as a ready-made tool for measuring the grammaticality/correctness or otherwise of every expression.
Our attention today is drawn to the above quoted expression, which is a corrupted version of a popular idiomatic expression. According to the Oxford dictionary of English, an idiom is “A group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words.” Idioms are “…natural to a NATIVE SPEAKER of a language”, the dictionary added. This by extension translates to mean that, idioms are fixed expressions that have meanings beyond the combination of words woven together to form them. As such, to the extent that they are fixed set of expressions is to the extent that they don’t entertain any form of addition or deletion; no matter their weirdness. The correct version of the idiom, therefore, is BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER. This is used to say that people of the same sort, character, ideology or worldview etc. are found together[/b]Birds and their feathers…
It is not uncommon to hear expressions such as “Birds of the same feather flock together.” Come to think of it: it appears logical to reason that birds that share the “same feather” are, most likely, to take flights together. It is at the same time, under the searchlight of logic that, one is quick to debunk the idea of birds having the same feather. Or have you seen such before? Though, I’m not unaware that logic hardly fails. The crux of the matter is that, as logical as logic is, it should not be employed as a ready-made tool for measuring the grammaticality/correctness or otherwise of every expression.
Our attention today is drawn to the above quoted expression, which is a corrupted version of a popular idiomatic expression. According to the Oxford dictionary of English, an idiom is “A group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words.” Idioms are “…natural to a NATIVE SPEAKER of a language”, the dictionary added. This by extension translates to mean that, idioms are fixed expressions that have meanings beyond the combination of words woven together to form them. As such, to the extent that they are fixed set of expressions is to the extent that they don’t entertain any form of addition or deletion; no matter their weirdness. The correct version of the idiom, therefore, is BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER. This is used to say that people of the same sort, character, ideology or worldview etc. are found together