Changes

I laughed. I cried and we've already mentioned the blushing, but perhaps best of al all I learned quite a lot. Most of these phrases began life in a positive way but have then been subverted over a period of years or even decades into the monsters which sneak into our language. Avoiding someone like the plague was once a sensible admonition. 'Boots on the ground' was - and still is - a simple way of describing whether or not troops are out there fighting but we've now heard it used about attendance at a school reunion. The 'bottom line' refers to the final figure in a company's accounts, be it profit or loss but now ''for self-important executives the phrase is used to mean simply what they want to know''.