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Chris -- 2018-04-11
One of the castaways said ”....see how the cards fold”. I immediatly thought of the expression, “let the cards fall where they may”. So when I looked up “see how the cards fold” I was surprised to find some hits.
http://www.google.com/search?client=saf … 8&oe=UTF-8
I also found an example of “let the cards fold where they may”
http://boardserver.superstats.com/read. … iscoldfeet
Last edited by lboy (2007-03-23 22:08:37)
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This is a nice eggcorn and a nice analysis by lboy. I would just add to that analysis that the word choice “fold” might have been inspired by it’s card game meaning: when a person does not call a bet in a card game, he “folds.” (And, it should be emphasized that the person folds, the cards don’t). Clearly this notion got jumbled when the utterer folded it into the idiom. This jumble actually strengthens the case for an eggcorn.
By the way, could someone please elaborate on the origin of the idiom “let the chips fall where they may.” It sounds very much like gambling imagery, but I don’t understand why one would let gambling chips fall—i.e., what purpose it would serve. I can more easily understand the notion of a sculptor letting chips fall where they may—as the chips would be unimportant relative to the sculpted piece. Do I have this all wrong?
Last edited by jorkel (2007-03-26 12:44:05)
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Jorkel—I don’t know the answer to your question, but someone posted more or less the same query over at phrases.org.uk; in response, another poster there cited two idiom dictionaries which support your own guess:
Let the Chips Fall Where They May. Never mind the consequences: speak your mind or do what you think must be done. You can see where the idea came from in a 14th-century proverb: “Hew not too high lest the chips fall in thine eye.” Today’s advice is to pay attention to the hewing (the task at hand) and not worry about what happens to the chips. Roscoe Conkling, a political boss and U.S. Senator from New York, said in a speech in 1880, “He [President Grant] will hew to the line of right, let the chips fall where they may.”
From The Dictionary of Cliches (1985) by James Rogers
let the chips fall where they may
No matter what the consequences, as in “I’m going to tell the truth about what happened, and let the chips fall where they may.” This metaphoric term alludes to chopping wood and is usually joined to a statement that one should do what is right (that is, the woodcutter should pay attention to the main task of cutting logs and not worry about small chips). [Late 1800s]
From The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms (1997) by Christine Ammer
The original post is here: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_boar … /1110.html
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Pure conjecture here, but “Let the chips fall where they may” to me brings to mind an image of someone at a roulette wheel. Instead of placing a specific bet by placing the gambling chips on a certain number, or color, they could be thrown at random onto the (I’m blanking on the proper term here for the area of the table marked out with the different numbers) grid to make a ‘lucky dip’ bet on wherever the chips happen to land.
“Your talent is God’s gift to you. Wwhat you do with it is your gift back to God.” Leo Buscaglia
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It’s interesting to find out what’s going on in peoples’ mind. I honestly had no personal imagery about “chips” except a faint conception of it being like drawing straws. I like the one’s you all have put out. I have no problem accepting the proposed original, and it sounds like the gambling analogy could be a stealth eggcorn. I’m not sure how it could be verified, though. It’s funny to think of the unintended images one could create in someone else’s mind. My new image is a clear picture of a lumberjack focusing on his swing and not the chips.
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