"To beat the threshold" - phraseological unit: meaning and examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

We don't think there will be anyone who likes to beat the thresholds. But there will be many curious people who want to know the meaning of this phraseological unit. Consider it in detail: meaning, origin and examples of use.

Meaning

Crossing the thresholds means walking, asking for a service, but most often it is a certain official decision. Thresholds usually suffer in the offices of officials.

There is no such adult in Russia who would not know in practice the meaning of this expression. As soon as our parents stop accompanying us, there will definitely be a case that will make us beat up the thresholds. A characteristic feature of such a walk is its senselessness. That is, people do not talk like that when a problem can be solved by going to one person in one office. This is how they argue when they have to visit one institution, then another, then a third for a long, long time. This series can be infinite.

Origin

People's memory has not kept a special story on this occasion. Apparently, the phraseologism arose from direct experience.

In Russia, from time immemorial, there have been two realities that do not communicate with each other:physical and bureaucratic. The main catch is that the second dominated the first. In other words, in order for something to move from its place in the physical reality, you need to ask permission and get written permission in the bureaucratic reality. By the way, that is why "Dead Souls" N. V. Gogol is an eternal work! However, let's not talk about sad things.

Initial shots of "Irony of Fate" by E. Ryazanov and idiom

Everyone's favorite New Year's film is preceded by cartoon footage that explains how it happened that the hero boarded the plane in Moscow and got off in St. Petersburg, gave the address and ended up "at home". Let's recap the gist very briefly. In the cartoon, the architect created a blueprint for a typical house. The accommodation was very beautiful. There were other buildings surrounding the house, the entrance, of course, everything was sketchy to the limit. The hour has come when the author had to knock on the thresholds of the offices of officials. And with a light stroke of the pen, they freed the project from the “superfluous”, until a simple rectangle with many windows remained from it. The cartoon ends with shots of typical Soviet dwellings marching around the planet. Fortunately, the prophecy did not come true.

This story, unfortunately, is well known to all people of creative professions who cannot find a permanent job. Translators knock on the thresholds of book publishers, writers and journalists - newspapers and magazines, and any unemployed - the offices of their potential leaders.

After the reader found out what kind of expression "knocking the thresholds" (we revealed and explained its meaning), weit remains only to wish him to go and ask his superiors for as little as possible.