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Comment by ConcernedCoder | Hacker News Reader

"the clerk almost jumped to my neck"

Thanks for this, I'm always amused at how certain phrases and sayings get twisted-up a bit during translations between languages, but I'm sure you actually meant "jumped down my throat"...

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That "jumped to my neck" threw me for a loop! Once I saw you point out the proper idiom I was able to breathe easily again. I've tried to find the origin of this idiom, but I've come up dry as a bone.

It's strange, but I come across these idioms from other cultures back-to-back as I read stories on HN. That's most likely due to the blood, sweat, and tears people put into communicatng on here. Or, maybe language is a bone of contention, and the idioms are simply a breath of fresh air that grabs us by the nape. Whatever the cause, the languages differences sometimes chill me to the bone, maybe they even cause a gut feeling as they hit a raw nerve.

I suppose it's better to be up your ears in idioms, rather than waiting with bated breath.

Thanks for letting me go off on a tangent!

What it the idiom "threw me for loop" referring to?

Non native English speakers struggle to grok these sayings...

I've also heard it as "knock me for a loop", and I think it calls back to "feeling loopy" as a sort of "dizzy", so to throw/knock someone for a loop is to metaphorically hit them so hard as to make them dizzy or disoriented.

It doesn't refer to anything that I am aware, it simply has the connotation of "looping" back, much like "doing a double take".

Until now, I had been unaware of the earliest usage shown below, and I had always understood the boxing reference to be the origin. Live and Learn!

To be “thrown for a loop” or “knocked for a loop” refers to being bewildered, dazzled, disoriented and shocked by some event (“AT&T and T-Mobile were thrown for a loop last week when the Department of Justice sued to block AT&T’s planned acquisition of T-Mobile,” CNET, 9/5/11). The phrase first appeared in print in the 1920s, and comes from what the Oxford English Dictionary terms “a centrifugal railway,” but which is, no doubt, better known as a “roller coaster.” The “loop” on roller coaster runs is the point where the coaster arcs upward through a complete circle, leaving passengers upside down at its apex. The term was initially used in the literal roller coaster sense and then to describe aerobatic maneuvers by pilots “looping the loop,” and finally in boxing to mean a powerful punch that downed an opponent, before acquiring its modern “OMG!” usage.

http://www.word-detective.com/2012/04/knock-for-a-loop-knock...

https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/15/messages/437.ht...

In Italian "saltare al collo" (literally "jump to the neck") can be used to mean a form of physical aggression (but normally used metaphorically) in English it would be more like "grab by the throat", I believe.

Viceversa to "grab by the throat" translates literally to "prendere per la gola" that actually means to "Tempt through food".

Don't know what's their native tongue but at least in Portuguese we have a saying that would translate literally to "jumped to my neck". I also love these language things :)

haha indeed! thx for the tip

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