Subject: summary : " grasshopper mind "

short answer : " grasshopper mind " is british english , not japanese - english . summary answer : thanks to those linguist readers who responded to my query ( 5 . 1431 , 94 / 12 / 11 ) about " grasshopper mind , " an expression that is entered into kenkyusha 's japanese - english and english - japanese dictionaries ( 1974 , 1980 ) and roget 's thesaurus ( 1982 ) , but apparently not found in any monolingual english dictionaries . the respondents , in alphabetical order , were : deborah milam berkley , marie egan , ted harding , steven schaufele , steve seegmiller , todd sieling , and stephen p . spackman . the inquiry asked four questions : ) do other english language reference works enter " the grasshopper mind " ? ) is it a varietal or dialectal term ? when was it first recorded ? are ) there analogous " grasshoppery " words in other languages ? ( 1 ) looking up " grasshopper mind " in english dictionaries is a lexicographical dead end . i ' ve checked dozens - - including old and new , standard and slang , uk and us , - - and not one enters it . some larger dictionaries record a derogatory sense of _ grasshopper _ ; e . g . , the new shorter oxford english dictionary ( 1993 ) : " 2 . _ fig . _ a person held to resemble a grasshopper in character or behaviour ; an inconstant , flighty , or frivolous person . l16 . " and the near-synonym " grasshopper brain " is webster 's third new international dictionary ( 1971 ) usage example for _ grasshopper _ meaning 3 . 2 " light and frivolous : untouched by care for the future . " ( 2 ) harding definitively answers the second question : ) " grasshopper mind " is well-known standard uk english usage . to say ) someone " has a grasshopper mind " means that their focus of attention ) jumps unpredictably from subject to random subject . none of the other respondents , including three widely-dispersed speakers of american english ( berkley , egan , seegmiller ) , had seen or heard this collocation , but all agreed they could readily understand what it means . in terms of _ grasshopper _ meaning ' frivolous , careless , ' the semantics of " grasshopper mind " are fairly self-explanatory . ( 3 ) dating the " grasshopper mind " coinage is moot . harding says : ) i ' m sure it 's not particularly recent in origin . . . . i ' m pretty sure it ) must be possible to trace early uses of the phrase " grasshopper mind . " sieling suggests checking aesop 's " the ant and the grasshopper , " and funk & wagnalls new standard dictionary ( 1913 ) defines _ grasshoppering _ as : " 1 . an unsettled and unsteady course of life ; improvident living : from the fable of the grasshopper and the ant . " ( 4 ) " grasshopper mind " has cross-linguistic analogues . schaufele describes it as : ) like all those complex words in german that you can't find in ) any dictionary but which are crafted for the nonce by completely ) productive strategies and are perfectly understandable to any ) reasonably-intelligent speaker of the language ( i had to coin one ) of these myself the other day , ' lehrgangsprotokoll ' , to mean what ) we mean here by a 's chool transcript ' ) . spackman thinks " grasshopper mind " reads like a loan translation of a foreign expression , and mentions an interesting ojibwa calque : ) the phrase " fire stick " which has been given in novels and movies ) to ignorant american natives is apparently a literal , morpheme-by - ) morpheme translation of the ojibwa word for a gun . except for one ) thing : it 's not stupid . " fire " here translates " launch a projectile " ) and " stick " is the classifier for a rigid rod . " rigid projectile ) launcher " is not so snappy , but a rather tighter word than " gun " ) do n't you think ? the semantically transparent " grasshopper mind " reveals a lexicographical gap between english dictionaries published in the united states and the united kingdom . while unknown to most american anglophones and familiar to many uk anglophones , lexicographers have overlooked this metaphor for orthopterous mentality . modern lexicography is benefiting from computerized corpora and machine-readable dictionaries . for instance , searching for adjectival _ grasshopper _ + noun combinations in cobuilddirect 's on-line corpus ( direct @ cobuild . collins . co . uk ) reveals three occurrences of " grasshopper mind , " two of " grasshopper warbler , " and one each of " grasshopper leap , " " weather , " and " nijinsky . " many dictionaries enter _ grasshopper warbler _ ( locustella naevia , characterized by its buzzing call ) but none _ grasshopper mind _ . further research is necessary . any information about this expression 's historical origins or distributional usages ( seegmiller asks about australian english ) would be gratefully welcomed . michael carr , otaru university of commerce , otaru 047 japan email carr @ canal . otaru-uc . ac . jp fax 81 + ( 0 ) 134-22 - 0467
