Chrysti The Wordsmith: Crow - 2

Greetings word lovers and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. The expression as the crow flies meaning the straightest line between two points is one example of the way the intelligent adaptable ubiquitous Crow inhabits our linguistic sensibilities. The bird shows up in a handful of phrasal formulas to eat crow is to acknowledge a mistake. This idiom was inspired by an incident during the War of 1812 when a British officer literally forced an American soldier to eat the meat of a crow in punishment for violating a cease fire in Australia however a crow eater is a lazy man who will live on anything and eat anything rather than work. Well crows have many fine attributes beauty is not one of them. This sentiment is echoed in the expression crow's feet an unflattering allusion to the lines that crease the corners of the eyes as though the four toed foot print of the bird had been permanently etched on the face. A crow bar with its stout

hook functions like the bird's bill which is designed to pry and turn heavy objects in cowboy parlance a horse that box in a series of stiff legged bird like jumps is a crow hopper while a crow bait is an old lame worthless horse good for nothing but carrion for the Crows. I'm Christi the wordsmith. This series is recorded in the studios of KGO on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry Web dot com.