| Comment | Ouch, my response was rejected because it was too large. I think it's worth saying, though, so I will post it in two parts:
@ Mattes and Sophil: Wow. Well, native speaker or not, I see I still have more to learn about English. (Isn't this fun?) Disclaimer: I"m no language professional, just somebody trying to improve my German in daily life. But here's my take on these interesting examples. On the one hand, I see that the phrase in English has a broader meaning than I realized. I always thought that the phrase refered to having negative emotions. But the Sinatra song clearly refers to things that fail to inspire emotion at all, and the other examples are largely consistent with this.
On the other hand, I notice that in all of these examples, the emotions that aren't being inspired, are all positive emotions. Sinatra "gets no kick" and alcohol "doesn't thrill" him. The slippery-slope argument leaves that columnist cold (doesn't impress him). The writer of "Tired 'Tale' Likely to Leave You Cold" says that:
"The embalmed, belabored fussiness of the filmmaker's style, laden with a sentimentality at once maudlin and coy, makes one wonder if the Belfast-born wunderkind hasn't gone slightly batty."
...so, he doesn't like the movie. Its sentimentality fails to inspire any positive sentiment. (And in fact appears to inspire some negative feelings -- perhaps getting away from the idea of total neutrality.) Likewise, the person writing about modern rock music searches in vain for recognizable emotions:
(continued in next post...) |
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