Ever since finding out that I was a humanist, I’ve been trying to cleanse most of the religion based idioms from my day-to-day speech.

‘Bless you’ as a response to sneezing was easily replaced by the secular equivalent of ‘gesundheit’, although I have yet to find away to ask other people to do the same in response to my sneezes, but there are some trickier words and phrases…

I do love to blaspheme – it’s my default form of profanity. ‘Christ’, it has such an expressive sound.

The thing is, these words are now hollow to me. I mean, they have lost their weight and impact. I might as well use ‘Thor’ or any other deity from a religion I don’t subscribe to.

Also, it becomes more insulting to people who do believe – there’s something slightly more acceptable about blasphemy if you believe in god… it’s as if you must really mean it, whereas when I use it, it just sounds like mocking.

Then there are the phrases used in the comic, and others such as ‘how the devil are you?’… they’re great too; interesting idioms that add colour to language and evoke all forms of imagery. And not only do I love these phrases, but I realise that there are no replacements. When I stop using them I lose the ability to evoke those images.

I don’t think I ever realised what a mammoth task this was going to be. It seems that you can leave religion only so long as you take a vow of silence.

It’s one of my least favourite sayings, ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions’. I think it means that intending to do good, but failing to follow it through is a bad thing… but surely that can’t be worse that intending to do something bad and actually doing it?

Maybe the phrase could be altered… ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions but the train is pure malice’.

Idioms – phrases with the sole purpose of making non-natives look confused.

And even if you know what those words mean, I’m sure the average person would have a hard time telling you why they mean that.

I assume, this being written in English (or close enough) you understand such classics as ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ and ‘in a pinch’, but how are you with some more obscure ones such as ‘brass monkeys’?

It’s a two way street – every language has its intentionally confusing idioms – Take the Latvian that translates as ‘up a stove pipe’… you could make a reasonable guess what that means, and you would likely be right… right but still unsure.

And it is this global uncertainty that lets you get away with a great pass-time – inserting nonsensical idioms into conversations. Try it, the more outrageous the more points, providing you don’t get pulled up on it.

… I phoned Mike in IT, he said the motherboard had bitten the kitten and that we might as well put the slipper on it for now…