That’s understandable; personally I really like it when the spoken/written words literally mean what is being communicated even if the communication is successful without that.
In this case the term is a random idiom that only means the-particular-thing because some other group decided that it colloquially means-that-thing, and that feels about as arbitrary as us deciding it colloqially means some other thing. (which apparently already happened).
Like, in some cultures “flip the bird” means “give the middle finger” which means “fuck you” which means “I’m unhappy with you and want to express that”, but, that doesn’t mean all English speakers need to think “flip the bird” means that set of things,.
But, seems good for avoiding unnecessary miscommunications between cultures.
Not sure what you’re saying is a random idiom, but if you mean ‘tap out’ is about as random as ‘flip the bird’, then that seems wrong to me. “Flip the bird” sounds like a fairly random phrase, closer to the randomness of cockney rhyming slang where the literal meaning has no relation to the new meaning (e.g. to go ‘up the apple and stairs’ means to ‘go up the stairs’, just because it rhymes). “Tapping out” refers to literally tapping your combat partner, which itself is a very natural choice of protocol, because you often cannot speak while you are being choked, it is not a random choice of action nor is the description somehow random.
That’s understandable; personally I really like it when the spoken/written words literally mean what is being communicated even if the communication is successful without that.
In this case the term is a random idiom that only means the-particular-thing because some other group decided that it colloquially means-that-thing, and that feels about as arbitrary as us deciding it colloqially means some other thing. (which apparently already happened).
Like, in some cultures “flip the bird” means “give the middle finger” which means “fuck you” which means “I’m unhappy with you and want to express that”, but, that doesn’t mean all English speakers need to think “flip the bird” means that set of things,.
But, seems good for avoiding unnecessary miscommunications between cultures.
Not sure what you’re saying is a random idiom, but if you mean ‘tap out’ is about as random as ‘flip the bird’, then that seems wrong to me. “Flip the bird” sounds like a fairly random phrase, closer to the randomness of cockney rhyming slang where the literal meaning has no relation to the new meaning (e.g. to go ‘up the apple and stairs’ means to ‘go up the stairs’, just because it rhymes). “Tapping out” refers to literally tapping your combat partner, which itself is a very natural choice of protocol, because you often cannot speak while you are being choked, it is not a random choice of action nor is the description somehow random.
Yeah the fact that the idiom only really existed in this particular context and wasn’t random is fairly compelling.