toe the line = push the limits

[Laurence Horn]

On May 16, 2012, at 9:12 AM, Amy West wrote:

> I searched the ADS-L archives (very quickly) and didn't see anything
> about this there yet (but I may have missed something) . . . .
>
> This is not the first time that I've noticed the use of "toe the line"
> to mean something along the lines of "push the limits of":
>
> --------------
>
> From a FB discussion re: Hildegard of Bingen's recent sainthood:
>
> Wow- and she is seriously wacky so I'm a little surprised. I mean she
> toed the line on heresy for sure.
>
> ---------------
>
> Those who know about HvB know that she was very close to being (if not
> outright) heretical in her mystical writings. The rhetor (and I use that
> term specifically because the writing on FB is much more like speech)
> above is not using "toed the line" above to mean, as MWC11 has it, " to
> conform rigorously to a rule or standard." Rather, she's meaning that
> HvB almost crosses the line.
>
> I don't know if the speaker is an ESL speaker or native speaker, but I
> think there's some reanalysis of the phrase going on, and I think we're
> seeing this phrase take on this second meaning opposite to the first.
> (Oh, heck, what is this process called?)

I don't know about the process, but the phenomenon represented by words with opposed senses (or by homonyms with opposed meanings, not quite the same phenomenon) has been variously called antilogy, contronymy, enantiosemy, enantionymy, Gegensinn (Freud's term), and auto-antonymy, and the words/senses involved contronyms, enantionsemes, enantionyms, Janus words, and auto-antonyms.

> And it may be due to the
> influence of the phrase "cross the line." I think I have seen some of my
> students use "toe the line" this way. Once we get editors who use it
> this way, we'll start seeing it in published materials.
>


I wonder if there's an influence from the longstanding eggcorn "tow the line".

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org