I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World (20 page)

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Some would retort that competition imposes limits. Well, sort of, but not in a useful sense. Competitors out-consume each other in relation to resources until there aren’t any more inputs left to compete with.

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For some Europeans even this is meager; Romans in
A.D
. 354 had 177 festival days.

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The term
laissez-faire
is invisible in Smith’s writings. He believed government had a necessary role.

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Itself almost invisible in Smith’s writings, mentioned but three times in a million-plus words.

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H. L. Mencken’s joyful definition of a Puritan: one who is fearful that someone, somewhere is happy.

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Utility maximization—Enron’s initial business plan?

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In ancient Rome there was a job title called a
psychopomp
—a soul conductor. One of his duties was to poke fallen gladiators with a burning-hot metal rod to make sure they weren’t faking. Also, many plumbers in ancient Rome were women.

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In ancient Rome the fan slave was called a flabelifier.

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An idiom keeping alive an older meaning of curry–to groom or comb, as horses.

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H. L. Mencken defined
conscience
as the “inner voice that reminds you someone may be looking.”

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Not a misspelling, this is a symptom of Irritable Vowel Syndrome, an irrational nostalgia for English English spellings that causes intermittent inflammation of irritatingly omitted vowels.