The Sun may not realise it, but when it described Aston Villa as a team which 'refused to give up the ghost', it was using a phrase from King James Bible. Likewise the Daily Mirror and its description of the actress Tilda Swinton as 'a law unto herself'.
These days most of us do not read the Bible on a regular basis, and a 2009 survey found that only a little over a third of the population knew the parable of the prodigal son. In past times, however, people of all ages and socio-economic groups read the Bible regularly - or at least heard it in church, so absorbed the language of it.
An article on the BBC website looks at the language of the King James Bible and how it has influenced modern English. It says that the Bible is more or less a literal translation, so the Hebrew expressions are translated word for word, giving us the vivid idioms that we wouldn't expect in English, such as 'by the skin of one's teeth' and 'the land of the living'.
David Crystal found 257 expressions in the King James Bible that are used in modern English, and only a small minority of those expressions made their debut in the Bible, most having been copied from earlier translators. Crystal also found that there are relatively few coined words in the Bible -- two examples are battering ram and backsliding.
For the full article see here.
Interesting stuff!
Posted by: R. Lawson | January 27, 2011 at 12:47 AM
Thank you. Please come back again.
Posted by: Virtual Linguist | January 27, 2011 at 09:49 AM
Nice stuff dude it's really good...:)
Posted by: bible player | July 11, 2011 at 01:19 PM