Bokelskere.no

Dét visste ikke jeg heller - at "he bought the farm" er et idiom som betyr at fyren døde... Så jeg skjønner altså ikke engelsk, jeg heller. Min sympati går følgelig til oversetteren.... Men jeg liker å lære noe nytt, så takk for opplysningen! :-D (En dag jeg har ånden over meg, kommer jeg antagelig til å forsøke å finne ut av bakgrunnen for det uttrykket - eller kanskje du kan fortelle dét også, jengeno? Hvordan i all verden oppstod den koblingen mellom anskaffelse av landbrukseiendom og opphør av livsfunksjoner?)

Ellers er jeg ganske forbløffet over å ha lest noe av en forfatter som er utgitt i en serie som "på norsk" går (gikk) under navnet Pulp fiction... For uendelig mange år siden (= sånn cirka 20?) kom jeg over Jim Thompsons The Grifters, som jeg skjønner ble gitt ut på norsk med tittelen "Fikserne". En historie som levner lite tro på det lyse og gode i menneskene, det der... Noen år etter at jeg leste den, oppdaget jeg en film som åpenbart bygget på den romanen. Var det ikke Anjelica Houston som spilte den kvinnelige hovedrollen, tro? Kan være jeg husker feil. Boken var grei nok, for de anledningene man er på jakt etter lektyre om dysfunksjonelle relasjoner...

US phrase to buy the farm, meaning to die, come from?

A That specific phrase turns out to be surprisingly recent, being first recorded only in the 1950s. From the evidence that Professor Jonathan Lighter has compiled in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the first clear written evidence comes from the US Air Force, where it was slang for a fatal crash.

This seems to be related to several older British slang sayings, like buy it or buy one (usually in the form “He’s bought one!”). These are known to be British fighter pilot slang from the time of the First World War for being wounded or killed, particularly for being shot down in combat. Both seem to be ironic references to something that one could not possibly want to buy. There was also the fuller phrase to buy a packet with the same sense (which is probably a combination of the RAF sayings with a British Army expression, to stop a packet, where the packet is a bullet, so meaning to be shot — either wounded or killed).

In USAF usage, there were other forms around in the early 1950s, like buy the plot and buy the lot (presumably references to grave plots), but buy the farm prevailed. A story about its origin was told in an issue of American Speech in 1955:

Jet pilots say that when a jet crashes on a farm the farmer usually sues the government for damages done to his farm by the crash, and the amount demanded is always more than enough to pay off the mortgage and then buy the farm outright. Since this type of crash is nearly always fatal to the pilot, the pilot pays for the farm with his life.

This sounds suspiciously neat, not to say improbable, and the lifting of my back hairs tell me this is folk etymology. Also, Professor Lighter records people saying that they remember buy the farm from the US Air Force and the US Army at the time of the Korean War a few years earlier, when the idea of compensation could not apply.

To judge from subscribers’ comments, there are at least two possible explanations for the expression, either of which makes more sense than the one from American Speech. There was a broad consensus that the term is based on the kind of black humour so common among people in dangerous professions.

Ann Moore put it this way: “My Air Force Officer husband told me the origin as generally accepted in USAF. When a pilot mused about retirement he would say, ‘I’m gonna buy a nice little farm and settle down’ so when a fatal crash occurred his surviving buddies would say he had ‘bought the farm’ — he had retired, permanently”. Larry Krakauer suggested a possible source: “In some US war movie, there’s a character from the heartland who at some point shares his vision of the future with his buddies. After the war is over, he’s going to go back home, buy a small farm, and settle down. Later in the story, this soldier is killed, and one of his friends muses, ‘Well, I guess Joe’s bought his farm now’ ”.

However, others have suggested a more immediately relevant origin. Jack Burton wrote: “I understand that this term dates back at least to World War II. Each member of the U.S. armed services was issued a life insurance policy in the amount of $10,000, a great deal of money in those days. Many of the troops were unmarried youngsters who named their parents as beneficiaries. Many of the parents were still living on a farm in those days, and most farms were mortgaged. If a youngster were killed, the $10,000 dollars would be used by the parents to pay off the mortgage.”

Anecdotal evidence from several subscribers suggests that the saying is in fact at least as old as World War II, and may even date back to World War I, so perhaps being more closely linked to the older forms I quoted earlier than the written evidence suggests.

Siden jeg er i godt humør idag (og plutselig ble veldig usikker på om jeg drev vranglære her inne, til tross for at jeg har "kjent" uttrykket i veldig mange år) så kan jo
DENNE være tingen.

Ikke at jeg pleier å oversette veldig feil, altså:)

Kanskje jeg skulle stille mine tjenester til disposisjon for et forlag som faktisk BRYR SEG OM denne typen litteratur? For jeg tror faktisk at en av grunnene til at Pulp Fiction-serien ikke fungerte i Norge var at leserne

• Ikke hadde de nødvendige referansene
• Ble forvirret over at historiene enkelte ganger ikke hang helt sammen (grunnet sånne feil)
• Reagerte på at språket generelt var for "dårlig"

Hei forlagsfolk: HER ER JEG. Si ifra om jeg kan hjelpe dere!!!

Hei, det var en fin side! (den du lenket til, altså - phrases.co.uk.) Tænkju, tænkju.

Nå måtte jeg bare sjekke hva Cappelens store norsk-engelske hadde å si om saken. Under oppslagsordet buy fant jeg blant annet:

• he bought it, he bought a packet: han ble skutt (ned); bought it!: ferdig! slått ut!

Min store Webster's engelsk-engelske hadde derimot ikke noe av interesse for saken. Min oppslagsbok med engelske idiomer klarte jeg ikke å lokalisere i farten, så jeg lar det være med dét for i kveld.

Språk er gøy! :-D

Uttrykket "He bought it" kjenner jeg til, ja, litt eldre slang det også, vel. Men ikke noe mer farm i!

Jeg har heller aldri hørt dette uttrykket før. Kan det ha noe med å gjøre at man får et lite jordstykke? Merket at jeg ble litt irritert over ikke å vite det :)

Nest etter(?) preposisjoner, er vel idiomer det vanskeligste av alt å forholde seg til på fremmedspråk... ;-P

Jeg for min del ble ikke irritert over egen vankunne, bare veldig, veldig skuffet... :-)