By the way, I’ve never heard ‘north’ used the way you report Wayne. Is it regional or subcultural?!

It’s geographically widespread. I know I have heard it on American T.V. news and commentary programs. I *think* I have also heard it on the BBC. I’m sure it has been subcultural but it is rapidly becoming a standard usage with the meaning of ‘increasing,’ the opposite of “south,” which means ‘decreasing.’

I’m not sure about “Roll up your mental shirt sleeves”, though I suspect it conveys the original meaning quite well, as may well “So strip your minds for action”. I doubt a google of either phrase would produce a result, but they both sound natural enough to me.

By the way, I’ve never heard ‘north’ used the way you report Wayne. Is it regional or subcultural?!

Here’s how the woman, Julia Evelina Smith, who knew both Hebrew and Greek, translates. How different it would be with the metaphors deleted (even if she’d been able to google what the other American and British English writers were writing) :

“Wherefore having girded up the loins of your mind, living abstemiously, hope perfectly upon the grace brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ”
– I Peter 1:13

“And so shall ye eat it, your loins girded, your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand : and ye ate it m hasty flight ; a passing over to Jehovah.”
– Exodus 12:11

“And he judged the powerless with justice, and he decided in straightness for the humble of the earth: and he struck the earth with the rod of his mouth, and by the spirit of his lips he will slay the unjust. And justice was the girding of his loins, and truth the girding of his loins.”
– Isaiah 11:4-5

“Rise up, ye careless women; hear my voice, ye confident daughters; give ear to my word. Days over a year shall ye being confident, be disturbed; for the vintage being finish, the ingathering shall not come. Tremble, ye careless; be disturbed, ye confident: strip and be naked, gird upon the loins. Smiting Upon the breasts, for the fields of desire. Upon the land of my people shall come the thorn of the sharp point. . . ”
– Isaiah 33:9-13

” Ask ye now, and see if a male brought forth? wherefore did I see every man his hands upon his loins as she bringing forth, and all faces were turned to paleness?”
– Jeremiah 30:6

“She purposed a field, and he will take it: from the fruit of her hands she planted a vineyard. She girded her loins with strength, and she will strengthen her arms”
– Proverbs 31:16-17

“Gird now thy loins as a man ; and I will ask thee, and make thou known to me.”
– Job 38:3

“For where your treasure is, there also will be your heart. Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; And ye like men expecting their Lord, when he shall loose from the nuptials; that having come and knocked, they might quickly open to him. Happy those servants, whom the Lord having come shall find watching; truly I say to you, he will gird himself, and make them recline, and having come he will serve them.”
–Joshua (aka Jesus) speaking rather metaphorically in Hebrew-Aramaic, a first century Jewish male to other first century men who are Jews, in Luke’s Greek translation (now in Julia’s English, Luke 7:34-38)

Sue, just wait for my next post…

Wayne, I’m with you on the limits of “googling” data. I do think it is a valid test for Biblish as I outlined at the beginning.

Peter

what are y’all feeling about using Google for judging naturalness/acceptability of phrases in English?

As with anything else found on the Internet, we have to “consider the source.” Not everything found on the Internet is true. Not everything posted on the Internet is written in natural language. We have to try to determine whether or not what was written by written by someone who is a fluent, native speaker of a language, whether they follow rules of standard usage for that language, we have to find out during what period of the history of a language a document we are googling was written, we need to learn what register of a language a document was written in.

I have had a number of people respond to my field test results with Google results that show hits on word sequences that my field testing and personal linguistic intuitions would say are not natural. But the Google results lack the rigor of scientific data sampling and all the background information we need (such as the question raised in the preceding paragraph) to determine if what was written is actually natural in the language.

We also need to recognize that naturalness in language is part of a system of percentages. An utterance or phrase is not natural simply because it occurs in a document somewhere. Wordings become natural when they are used by a high enough percentage of fluent speakers of a language. I don’t know what that percentage is, but I’m guessing it should be well north of 60%. (That’s the first time I’ve used “north” in this way. I deliberately used it this way because I am hearing this usage more and more. It seems to be becoming natural!

Of course, if googling for some wording produces a number of hits but they all come from the Bible or sermons by ministers who speak or write Biblish, then the results are not legitimate, since they represent circular reasoning, proving Biblish is natural because we find occurrences of Biblish on the Internet.

Peter was a tough dude and a fisherman so maybe he did have a fairly robust and earthy vocabulary.