Just a fluffy language question here:
I take the UK expression "the penny dropped" to convey the moment when a previously confused or mistaken person finally understands something. Generally something important and maybe something painfully obvious to others. E.g. this in the Guardian:
The penny's dropped, says minister
It did not take another disappointing summer of sports results - including the opening contests at the Athens Olympics - for Tony Blair's ministers to realise they had been naively optimistic about the challenge they face in raising the country's game.So here's my question: is there a North American expression that conveys this precise sense of a realization reached after foolish delay? The best I can think of is a children's joke from the northeast U.S.: "Light dawns on (M)arble (H)ead." But is there a more formal equivalent?
And BTW what's the derivation of the English expression? Maybe those old coin-fed household gas meters?
Posted by Martha Bridegam at August 26, 2004 03:22 PMThat's a great expression. I always sort of interpreted it as a dramatic moment deflated by the fact that what drops is only a penny.
It's also a nice image because suddenly realizing something obvious feels a little bit like walking along and hearing a coin fall out of your pocket, a sudden discombobulation or disorientation.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at August 26, 2004 03:49 PMAnd here I was thinking about the penny in the vending machine that finally makes its way into the mechanism, allowing the gas heater to start up, or the spin dryer or pinball machine to start moving -- hence the small mechanical movement that allows the desired process to finally start working.
So you're thinking about the sound of a coin hitting the sidewalk?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at August 26, 2004 04:09 PMYeah, well, that makes sense too. Maybe that's why it's so popular. It's, uh, multivariate or multivalent or whatever that English professor word is that I'm thinking of.
But really I suspect yours is closer to, well, what most people are thinking of. If both meanings were in a dictionary mine would be the second one.
I know there's another expression that has to do with dropping that is more momentous and conveys a similar sense of a sudden start or end. Isn't there in racing something about a flag dropping? Or in chess?
Posted by: Alan Hogue at August 26, 2004 05:04 PMThis site suggests it is from gamling machines:
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW186/page2.html.
I've no idea if the slang phrase "to spend a penny" exists in North America but that means something else entirely.
There are a lot of slang phrases involving dropping things: my Cassell's Dictionary of Slang has well over a hundred variations. 'Drop' as a verb meaning 'to gain knowlegde / to understand' has been in use since the early C19th so it's quite likely there are many more variations than Cassell lists but I can't think of one from racing (flags and tapes are dropped, I know).
Posted by: Mags at September 2, 2004 05:06 AM"To tumble to it" is a UK expression for "to finally figure out," isn't it?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at September 2, 2004 12:19 PMIt's just "to tumble it", normally, or "tumbled" e.g. "I finally tumbled". There's also "twigged" e.g. "Oh, I've just twigged it!".
There's also "rumbled" but that is normally only used to indicate someone else working something out, as in classic British crime style: "We've been rumbled, guv!".