Thorn in your side

Thorn in your side

A thorn in your side. This is about as close as I’ll ever come to selecting an idiom to discuss on this program. Especially if you’re in Plain English Plus+, you know that I don’t think you should be spending much time learning idioms, unless you need them for a test. But this is one that I do think you should know, even if you don’t use it a whole lot.

A thorn is the part of a rose that can hurt you. There’s the beautiful flowering part, the red or white or pink petals , but then there is the sharp part on the stalk . “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” is a song by the 1980s band Poison. You can contemplate that for a moment.

A thorn in someone’s side is something that is hurtful , painful , harmful but not (or not yet) deadly . The expression is used to describe the degree of pain you would receive from being jabbed by the thorn of a rose . It’s certainly not insignificant . It draws blood . But it doesn’t incapacitate you or threaten your life, either. A thorn in your side is something that holds you back ; it is something that distracts you from what you want to do, because it is painful. The protests in Hong Kong are a thorn in Premier Xi Jinping’s side. They don’t threaten his rule, but neither are they insignificant. He can’t ignore them—and he isn’t—but they are not a mortal threat to his rule.

Let me give you a counterexample, something that is not a thorn in a leader’s side. Brexit is not a thorn in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s side. Why not? Because Brexit is his whole reason for being Prime Minister. That’s the biggest thing going on there. That’s the big battle of the day, whereas a thorn in your side is a brief but painful distraction.

But here is a thorn in the British Prime Minister’s side: Jo Johnson was a minister in the Cabinet and he resigned over the actions and positions of his brother, Boris. The resignation of his brother was a thorn in Boris Johnson’s side. Annoying , distracting, embarrassing —yes, yes, yes—but not something that’s going to take him down.

Here’s another thing about this phrase: it’s specific to you. You would never say, “this bad traffic is a thorn in my side.” Traffic is a general nuisance ; it affects everyone. A thorn in your side is something that affects you specifically. The garage door opener that didn’t work the first 20 times I pressed it: that was thorn in my side, until I finally replaced it.

Quote of the week

The hurricane that hit the Bahamas and glanced off the coast of the US was called Hurricane Dorian. And that reminded me of a book by Oscar Wilde called “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” which was my least favorite book in school. We read it in the ninth grade. I think you’re about fourteen years old in the ninth grade in the US. I hated this book so much, it’s a wonder it didn’t turn me off literature entirely . Now that I’m older, I might try reading it again, but I rather enjoy looking back on how much I hated it. Anyway, Hurricane Dorian reminded me of that book, so I went looking for a good quote from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, and here it is: “Experience is merely the name men [give] to their mistakes.” I rather like that. Having recently started a membership site, I can honestly tell you I’ve gotten a lot of good “experience!” Today’s quote is “Experience is merely the name men [give] to their mistakes,” from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

That’s all for today.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love Plain English Plus+, our new membership that will help you take your English learning to the next level. With a fast version of this very program, plus video lessons, Quizlet flash cards, monthly courses, and our famous translated transcripts, Plain English Plus+ has all the resources you need to improve your listening, writing, speaking and reading. I spoke about idioms before. I compiled a list of the absolute worst idioms that are taught in English classrooms—I bet you’ve learned at least five of them. The problem? Nobody uses them. They’re rare, but for some reason they stay alive in English classrooms around the world. To find out what they are, and to get all the other resources of Plain English Plus+, please visit PlainEnglish.com/Plus.

JR and I will be back with a new episode, new topic, no more recycled topics, on Thursday. See you then.