put your leg in the fire

TankHughes commented on the word put your leg in the fire

Brought this up a few times yesterday and here's the best answer:

A merger between put your feet to the fire as a high-stakes testing environment, and add another log to the fire meaning to add a new idea to the mix.

August 25, 2015

bilby commented on the word put your leg in the fire

Home-distilled vodka and the Hokey Pokey were never going to be a good mix.

August 24, 2015

slumry commented on the word put your leg in the fire

I am glad you enjoyed the list, qms. I often wish I had saved some amazing figures of speech I have come across when doing editing.

August 24, 2015

qms commented on the word put your leg in the fire

Slumry, thank you! The list of mixed metaphors is great. Years ago, when I was a TA in an English department, we grad students compiled such a list from student papers, but it was much shorter and my ancient ink-on-paper version vanished long ago.

I am going to save this until December and use it for Christmas presents.

August 24, 2015

slumry commented on the word put your leg in the fire

I decided to try this, but it has me stumped... Really, I can't quite make sense of this one. Irons in the fire? Break a leg? Put some skin in the game? In the course of my "research," I did come across this list, which has me doubling over in stitches http://tigger.uic.edu/~rramakri/Readings/Fun/Mixed-Metaphors.htm

August 24, 2015

TankHughes commented on the word put your leg in the fire

I heard this repeatedly in a meeting this morning, used like stick your neck out in the context of volunteering to do QA between three websites. Before someone said that, I said "I know I'll probably kick myself for mentioning this, but..." so maybe kick primed a leg-based sacrificial idiom? Is it a translation or corporate jargon or a mixed metaphore?

August 24, 2015