Do you still think your communication was better than the people who thought the line was being towed, and if so then what’s your evidence for that?
We are way off topic, but I am actually going to say yes. If someone understands that English uses standing-on-the-right-side-of-a-line as a standard image for obeying rules, then they are also going to understand variants of the same idea. For example, “crossing a line” means breaking rules/norms to a degree that will not be tolerated, as does “stepping out of line”. A person who doesn’t grok that these are all referring to the same basic metaphor of do-not-cross-line=rule is either not going to understand the other expressions or is going to have to rote-learn them all separately. (And even after rote-learning, they will get confused by less common variants, like “setting foot over the line”.) And a person who uses tow not toe the line has obviously not grokked the basic metaphor.
My understanding of the etymology of “toe the line” is that it comes from the military—all the recuits in a group lining up , with their toes touching (but never over!) a line. Hence “I need you all to toe the line on this” means “do exactly this, with military precision”
We are way off topic, but I am actually going to say yes. If someone understands that English uses standing-on-the-right-side-of-a-line as a standard image for obeying rules, then they are also going to understand variants of the same idea. For example, “crossing a line” means breaking rules/norms to a degree that will not be tolerated, as does “stepping out of line”. A person who doesn’t grok that these are all referring to the same basic metaphor of do-not-cross-line=rule is either not going to understand the other expressions or is going to have to rote-learn them all separately. (And even after rote-learning, they will get confused by less common variants, like “setting foot over the line”.) And a person who uses tow not toe the line has obviously not grokked the basic metaphor.
I thought I just established that “toeing the line” is not referring to the same basic metaphor as “crossing a line”.
My understanding of the etymology of “toe the line” is that it comes from the military—all the recuits in a group lining up , with their toes touching (but never over!) a line. Hence “I need you all to toe the line on this” means “do exactly this, with military precision”
Yes. (Which is very different from “stay out of this one forbidden zone, while otherwise doing whatever you want.”)