Phraseologism "like a ram on a new gate" - meaning and origin

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

The idiom "like a ram to a new gate" (usually combined with verbs - looking or staring) is quite famous and used today. So they usually say about a person who was dumbfounded by a vision that became something very unexpected for him. Also, this idiom is used to characterize a person who is not very smart, thinking slowly, stupid, stupid.

In his speech, looking for images for comparison, a person quite often refers to natural objects. So, for example, a fool is seen as something motionless - a tree, a club. Compare similar expressions: "a stump with ears", "a stump with a stump". Or here is a comparison with an animal: "stupid as a gray gelding." Such is the expression "like a ram on a new gate", the meaning is similar. Next, we will give the two most likely explanations for the origin of this phraseological unit.

Version one. From life

The most common version of the origin of this idiom is also the simplest. Therefore, we will present it first. It has purely "worldly" roots, moreover, thatcalled, "zoologically justified." Everyone (and if someone does not know, then he probably read about it) knows that a ram is a stupid and stubborn animal. Sheep nature is subject to habit - in the morning they drove him out along the same road to the pasture, and the interior around was always the same. So, there is a story that both explains the meaning and sheds light on the origin of this expression.

Spent somehow in the morning one owner of a flock of sheep to eat, but while they were gone, he painted the gate in a different color. Or maybe even updated. In the evening (and sometimes, by the way, rams were driven out to graze for the whole season), the herd returned from the pasture, and the main ram - the leader of the herd - froze at the "new" gate, stupidly examining the detail of the unusual color. It is not clear: the courtyard is native, but the gates are not the same. It stands, looking, and not a step forward. And with him, the whole herd is marking time.

It is very possible that, mistaking the "new" gate for some unknown enemy, the animal began to methodically attack him and pound with his horns. Here, the owner had no choice but to take and carry the stupid animal into the yard, and then drive the rest of the herd. However, they say, there was a case when the gate was moved a few meters to the right. The ram came to the former place and stood looking blankly at the place where the entrance used to be. Zoologists suggest that the sheep's "strength" is visual memory, which helps (and sometimes prevents) them from navigating in space.

Version two. Historical

Doesthe second version of some semantic connection with the first, remains a mystery. Because the roots of this explanation of the origin of the famous saying go back to the distant past. Presumably at the beginning of our era, rams began to be called rams - wall-beating and breaking-through tools, at the end of which cast-iron or bronze tips in the form of a ram's head were put on for a fortress. They were allegedly invented by the Carthaginians, but the images of these tools are known to archaeologists from the Assyrians.

The Hebrew historian Josephus Flavius in the 1st century AD wrote about this tool:

This is a monstrous beam, similar to a ship's mast and equipped with a strong iron tip like a ram's head, from which it takes its name; in the middle, it is suspended on thick ropes from another transverse beam, resting at both ends on strong pillars. Pulled back by numerous warriors and thrown forward by the combined forces, it shakes the wall with its iron end.

It is worth listening to his words, since the historian himself wrote about rams firsthand, and he himself more than once witnessed the sieges of Jewish cities by the Romans.

Another military theorist, this time a Roman one, by the name of Vegetius in the 4th century suggested that the "ram" was called "ram" not only because of consonance, but also because of the same tactics of a monotonous and powerful butting attacks of a hostile object.

It is worth mentioning that V. I. Dal uses in one of the articles in the general series (as synonyms)the words "ram", "ram", "ram".

There is also a version of the origin of the idiom "like a ram to a new gate", which refers to the Sheep (Gethsemane) gate in Jerusalem - they once led sacrificial animals through them. However, it does not seem logical because it does not explain the general meaning of the expression.

Literature examples

From joy and surprise, for the first second, he could not even utter a word, and only, like a ram at a new gate, looked at her.

(I. Bunin, "Ida")

- He would, a fool, say they say: "Sinful, father!" Well, he just snores and stares at his eyes like a ram at a new gate.

(M. Sholokhov, "Virgin Soil Upturned")

Please note that the phraseological unit "like a ram on a new gate" in the sentence plays the role of a circumstance and, according to the rules of the Russian language, must be separated by a comma. True, in modern literary sources, authors increasingly do not separate this comparison. With "frozen" expressions, idioms, this happens:

I stared at the task like a ram at the new gate and left it alone. I didn't even know which side to approach her from.

(E. Ryazanov, "Unsummed up")

However, this is still not a rule and should not be followed.

Which synonyms to choose

To the proverb "look like a ram at a new gate" we will offer the following similar phrases-comparisons:

• stare withlooking stupid;
• look dumbfounded;
• stare in disbelief;
• stand motionless, looking at something;
• fall into a stupor when seeing something new and unexpected;
• goggle.

Clever girl is like a priest's chicken.

In the image, like me, but in the mind - a pig.

Became like a bull, and don't know what to do.

These are synonymous expressions of the fool from folklore, in which he is compared to an animal.