The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XLI

[Gori the Grey]

I'm looking for an idiomatic expression in English for "work up a head of steam" when it has to do with speaking. It might begin with "find one's." I thought "find one's vein," but when I try to google that, I get stuff about making a person's vein prominent for delivering an injection. Anyway, what I have in mind is when a person starts speaking, and by virtue of speaking itself, really gets energetic and fluent and eloquent and impassioned. I swear there's a three- or four-word expression for that.

 

[really]

Find your voice?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thanks, really, (no, really, thanks) but I think that's not quite it. That usually refers to an author finding a distinctive writing style.

Maybe it's something like "warm to his theme." Let me go google that.

I think that's it: "warming to his theme." You didn't give the right answer, really, but somehow you got the right mental synapse to close, so thank you.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Thanks, really, (no, really, thanks) but I think that's not quite it. That usually refers to an author finding a distinctive writing style.

Maybe it's something like "warm to his theme." Let me go google that.

I think that's it: "warming to his theme." You didn't give the right answer, really, but somehow you got the right mental synapse to close, so thank you.

The phrase I've read is "find your mojo."

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yes, though that doesn't apply to speaking exclusively. My first thought was "get up a head of steam," but that too can be for any kind of activity whatsoever.

No "warm to his theme" was the phrase I had on the tip of my tongue. When one is in that situation, one knows the right answer the second it comes to one.

 

[warpus]

I've had dried mango, bananas, pineapple, apple, and a couple of other kinds of fruit. But never strawberries. It's kind of a revolting idea, actually.

I googled it and it seems pretty common and IIRC my fried does like strawberries, so that was probably it. Looked it up and yeah, in Spain strawberries are known as Fresa, but in Chile they go by Frrutilla. I vaguely remember them having a name that's similar to "fruit" so that checks out

I'm not a big fan of strawberries myself, but if you like them, what's so bad about them being dried? I remember this store having other types of dries berries too, fruit, and other assorted homemmade hiking food.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

When one is in that situation, one knows the right answer the second it comes to one.

One is beginning to think that one took a detour to the planet in the Third Doctor story "Carnival of Monsters" because one never uses words like "me" or "I" on that world.

I googled it and it seems pretty common and IIRC my fried does like strawberries, so that was probably it. Looked it up and yeah, in Spain strawberries are known as Fresa, but in Chile they go by Frrutilla. I vaguely remember them having a name that's similar to "fruit" so that checks out

I'm not a big fan of strawberries myself, but if you like them, what's so bad about them being dried? I remember this store having other types of dries berries too, fruit, and other assorted homemmade hiking food.

Strawberries are supposed to be fresh, juicy, and sweet.

 

[Gori the Grey]

One is beginning to think that one took a detour to the planet in the Third Doctor story "Carnival of Monsters" because one never uses words like "me" or "I" on that world.

I did use the word "I" in the sentence just prior. One is not allowed one sentence with "one"?

 

[warpus]

Strawberries are supposed to be fresh, juicy, and sweet.

When you go on a 5 day long hike dried fruit is the norm, since it lasts a lot longer and is a lot more compact. It contains a lot of the stuff your body will crave on a long hike. Fresh fruit would take up far too much space and go bad too fast

 

[thetrooper]

^ Looking at your sig. You know what you're talking about.

 

[warpus]

Mind you I did see a guy bring apples for a 4 day hike through the Southern Alps, and those lasted him at least 2 days. But it's not really recommended unless you're going on a shorter hike. The compactness of dried fruit is really a big plus when you have to be economical about what you bring. My small baggie of dried apricots lasted me for a long time when I was hiking through NZ, and I didn't have to worry about it going bad either. It's basically a highly compact source of energy. I don't even like apricots and they tasted amazing on the trail.

 

[thetrooper]

Salted nuts/raisins/chopped chocolate in winter.

 

[Samson]

I'm looking for an idiomatic expression in English for "work up a head of steam" when it has to do with speaking. It might begin with "find one's." I thought "find one's vein," but when I try to google that, I get stuff about making a person's vein prominent for delivering an injection. Anyway, what I have in mind is when a person starts speaking, and by virtue of speaking itself, really gets energetic and fluent and eloquent and impassioned. I swear there's a three- or four-word expression for that.

Get into his flow?

 

[Quintillus]

Anyone using "y'all" in this region is assumed to be American. If we say "you all", we don't slur the words together into a contraction.

We ran into some Spanish curiosities like that in Chile. I speak zero Spanish but my friend is fluent, although she learned Castillan Spanish in school. So I remember we were looking at some dried fruit to buy for a hike and she was trying to ask for strawberries (IIRC) and they had a different name there. I can't remember if we ran into the "you" issue too or if that's just something I read about, but that was on my radar too.

Here if I used "Y'all" I think people would assume I'm being sarcastic. i.e. trying to talk different to get some sort of reaction

Hmmmm, it seems to me that you were getting something wrong, because ‘vosotros’ and ‘ustedes’ (both actually descended from Latin vos, also a cognate of Slavic vy and English you, btw) are nearly interchangeable second-person plural-only pronouns. For first-person singulars you get another set of pronouns entirely.

Yeah, being seen as American or sarcastic is probably worse than being seen as southern within the U.S.

Different names for fruit can be an interesting one. I only know how to say "apricot" in Austrian German, for example, as they use a different word in Germany that I don't know. Dried strawberries... I actually have had those, in cereal. Special K Red Berries has them, IIRC. Freeze-dried, but still dried. They're not bad. I think I prefer them to dried raspberries, although fresh I prefer raspberries.

Yeah, I was afraid I had something wrong with the Spanish. When I looked it up online to refresh my memory, it was different than what I'd remembered, and I haven't studied Spanish in nearly 15 years.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Get into his flow?

Thanks, Samson, and Valka. it came to me. It's "warm to his theme." Telling really that "find is voice" wasn't it somehow triggered in my mind what was it.

By the way, one of the things I knew about the phrase in question when I couldn't remember it was that it had an old fashioned sound. I can imagine Dickens saying describing some character as warming to his theme.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I did use the word "I" in the sentence just prior. One is not allowed one sentence with "one"?

One appears to believe that a different one intended criticism when that was not the case.

When you go on a 5 day long hike dried fruit is the norm, since it lasts a lot longer and is a lot more compact. It contains a lot of the stuff your body will crave on a long hike. Fresh fruit would take up far too much space and go bad too fast

As mentioned, I don't have any objection to dried fruit in general (and I missed listing dried papaya as one that I like). I just can't imagine dried strawberries being palatable.

 

[warpus]

*shrug* when you are hiking for days everything sort of tastes good. Chocolate tastes incredible.

 

[really]

https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/cereal/red-berries-cereal.html
Dried berries aren't that unusual.
They are in some breakfast cereals.

 

[Samson]

Dried berries aren't that unusual.

Strawberries are not berries. They are nice dried though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Strawberries have fiber - you know what healthy-eating Bane suggests.

Yes, though that doesn't apply to speaking exclusively. My first thought was "get up a head of steam," but that too can be for any kind of activity whatsoever.

No "warm to his theme" was the phrase I had on the tip of my tongue. When one is in that situation, one knows the right answer the second it comes to one.

So you only had to warm to your theme - or can't that be used for analogous breakthroughs in thinking?