Another non-metaphor

[Wilson Gray]

Some may recall my posts on my realization that

"wipe the sleep from one's eyes"

isn't necessarily a metaphor. I didn't realize that because, in my
foundational, East Texas BE dialect, the word for "sleep" in the relevant
sense is "cat-butter."

Cf. German, "Die Ansammlung eingetrockneter Sekrete aus den Drüsen des
Augenlides (_Augenbutter_ oder Augenschleim), die während des Schlafes
entstehen und sich dann am Lidrand sammeln" and "Die typische Bezeichnung
der _Augenbutter_ in der Gebrauchssprache ist _„Schlaf“_."

I've found another instance of "cat-butter" in a blog by a black man from
DC. He mentions that his grandmother used the phrase, but he considered it
to be a kind of "riddle" - inside joke? - that he couldn't figure out.

<sigh!> Language-change in progress.

IAC, in recent weeks, I've had both dental surgery and ophthalmological
surgery, the former motivating me to look at my teeth with new eyes and the
latter enabling me to do that.

I suddenly noticed that a portion of the childhood gap between my upper
incisors had reappeared. A closer examination showed that those incisors
now looked longer, somehow, than they had been looking.

In a flash of insight, I realized that, a few weeks from the gage of 77, I
had become, in fact, "long in the tooth," in the literal sense.

Youneverknow.

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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