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"In the tank."

By Ann Althouse

I keep wanting to use this expression I hear all the time these days, but I always pick some other phrase, because I don't know what the "tank" is. Are we talking about something in a car or some sort of aquarium or what? I don't like to use meaningless yet concrete imagery. What do you picture when you hear that someone is "in the tank for Obama"?

Searching for a clue, I see that Julian Sanchez was fishing around the other day for an answer. He doesn't seem to get anywhere but he provokes one commenter to remind us of what George Orwell wrote about "dying metaphors" in "Politics and the English Language":

DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ?dead? (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

I've deeply internalized Orwell's advice. (I've read the old essay many times.) When I was writing the first sentence of this post, for "I always pick some other phrase," my first thought was "I always hold my tongue," and I rejected that phrase out of hand immediately.

Yet I do think "in the tank" sound spiffy. I like it. But I'm never going to use it until I know what the tank is.

Full post as published by Althouse on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).