Rolls Off The Tongue, RAISE A RED FLAG Origin: 18th Century ...

RAISE A RED FLAG

Origin: 18th Century, British and American English – According to Wikipedia, “the term red flag could mean either a literal flag used for signaling or, as a metaphor, a sign of some particular problem requiring attention. The earliest citation for “red flag” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1602 and shows that at that time the flag was used by military forces to indicate that they were preparing for battle. The earliest citation of “red flag” in the sense of a warning is dated 1777 and refers to a flag warning of flood. The term and the expression “to raise the red flag” come from various usages of real flags throughout history.” Examples are in semaphore, on ships, car racing, and fighting forest fires. A signal of danger or a problem can be referred to as a red flag, a usage that originated in the 18th century. The term “red flag” is used, e.g., during screening of communications, and refers to specific words, phrases or actions encountered that might indicate relevance to the case. Email spam filters make use of such “red flags”.

Usage: Informal and formal spoken and written British and American English.

Idiomatic Meaning: Alert someone about a potential danger or trouble ahead.Literal Meaning: Take a flag which is colored red and raise it higher than it was when first taken.

Why is this funny? In the cartoon we see a young woman raising a red flag. Why she’s doing this is not certain. As explained above, there are many reason she could be doing this. She might be signaling to either her potential employers or to a hidden colleague. What she’s consciously signaling about we don’t know but we do know that unconsciously she has signaled that she would probably not be a good employee because she’s not willing to work 5 days per week, nor accept only two weeks’ vacation per year. In fact, her very act of raising a red flag has raised a red flag!

Sample sentence: The first time he jokingly threatened her with violence should have raised a red flag that he was unstable.

Posted 8 years ago 2 notes • View comments Tagged: IDIOM, .

1. inlovewithchapter61-blog liked this
2. elsa816 reblogged this from rollsoffthetongue
3. rollsoffthetongue posted this

Blog comments powered by Disqus Rolls off the Tongue tries to answer the question What's So Funny? We present jokes and explain why they are funny; And we take a very close look at English idiomatic expressions. We now have an APP ON ITUNES, called ENGLISH IDIOMS INTERACTIVE. The app is a cartoon guessing game, presenting the idiom, its meaning, and its origin, in a fun interactive format. Click on the TWO BUTTONS below to get either the IPHONE OR IPAD version. Idioms are the weirdest part of the English language. They never mean what they say. They "roll off the tongue" without stopping at the brain. Take a look at the cartoon/photo and try to guess the idiom being illustrated. It shows both the literal and figurative meaning of the idiomatic expression. We'll be posting new cartoons/photos weekly. Good Luck and Have Fun! Ask me anything Answer to Current IdiomGuess the idiomChoose an Idiom / Choose a meaningGET THE IPHONE APPGET THE IPAD APP My blog All of Tumblr Follow on Tumblr Following RSS feed Random Archive Mobile © 2011–2026 Powered by Tumblr