Fiendish idioms －悪魔のイディオムズ－

In my last blog post, I talked about Robert Johnson and the legend that he sold his soul to the Devil.  It got me thinking about some idioms we use in English involving the Devil or Hell.  Here are three of the best known ones.

1 – Speak of the Devil.

If we are talking about someone or something and they suddenly and unexpectedly appear, people say, “Speak of the Devil.”

This is short for something like “Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.”  It is not meant to insult the person who appears, or to call them the Devil.  It is just used to show that the sudden appearance is a strange coincidence.

For example:
A: Did you hear that John is starting a new business?
B: No, I didn’t.  What kind of business is it?
(John suddenly appears)
A: Speak of the Devil.  Why don’t you ask him yourself?

2 – The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Imagine a road, or a path leading to Hell, a really bad place that you don’t want to go.  The road is not paved, or covered, with stone or dirt or any other normal material.  Instead, if you walk down that road, you are walking on good intentions.  How did those good intentions get there?

According to one interpretation, people started with good intentions and then abandoned them, moving towards Hell instead.  Thus, good intentions are like a kind of litter on the road to Hell.  So the idiom warns that it is harder to actually do something good rather than simply wish to do something good.  Doing good takes a lot of hard work and so good intentions are easily abandoned.

For example:
John is overweight.  He decides to go on a diet.  Excitedly, he tells his friends that he is going to lose a lot of weight and become thin.

His friend says, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”  That means, “It is easy to say that you are going to lose weight.  But I will believe it when I see it.”

Another interpretation of the idiom is that the good intentions are not litter.  The road to Hell was always made of good intentions.  This implies that even if people try to do good, sometimes it results in bad consequences.

For example:
The country has a large debt and the government tries to reduce the debt by increasing the rate of taxation.  Unfortunately, the increased levels of taxation damage the economy and the country’s debt actually increases.  A newspaper commentator remarks, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
 

3 – The Devil finds work for idle hands

Idleness is the opposite of activity.  So idle hands are doing nothing.  This idiom is a warning that if you don’t keep busy, then you may be tempted to do evil.
 

Vocabulary:

an interpretation – A way of judging the meaning of something; one possible way of reading something

litter – Rubbish dropped or left about, especially in public

to imply something – To suggest something

a consequence – A result of an action

debt – Money that is owed or must be repaid