The Ups and Downs of Left and Right

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† By Mark Nichol Left has gotten a bad rap throughout history. Because of overwhelming majority of people are right-handed (most estimates are in the range of 85 to 90 percent), left-handedness has come to be associated with weakness the word left itself is descended from an Old English word meaning â€Å"weak.† Left-handedness was therefore until recently often seen as undesirable, and even well into the twentieth century, parents and teachers often forced left-handed children to use their right hand for writing, eating, and other basic activities. Even now, â€Å"a left-handed compliment† (also described as â€Å"a backhanded compliment†), refers to an ostensibly positive comment that is explicitly or implicitly an insult. Idioms that employ left to describe an undesirable or unusual situation include â€Å"two left feet,† referring to a clumsy dancer, and â€Å"out of left field,† meaning an unexpected comment or idea. (The latter, however, is not necessarily derogatory.) We also use left to refer to something that remains behind as a result of deliberate action or accidental oversight. Another common idiom with a negative connotation, one using this sense of left, is â€Å"left a lot to be desired.† The equivalents of left in other languages have similarly pejorative meanings. Gauche, the French word for left, also means â€Å"tactless, crude, socially inept† in English as well as French. The opposite, droit, is the root word of maladroit, which means â€Å"incompetent, inept, unsuitable.† (English has adopted and adapted that term as adroit literally, â€Å"to the right,† and meaning â€Å"appropriate† as well as maladroit.) Sinister, from the Latin word for â€Å"on the left,† came to be associated with inauspicious or unlucky events, and was borrowed by French and later English to mean â€Å"evil.† In heraldry, it refers to the right-hand side of a coat of arms (the left-hand side from the point of view of the bearer of a shield, from which the coat of arms derived), opposite the dexter, or right, side. From the Latin element dextr-, meaning â€Å"on the right,† borrowed into English as dexter, we also get the adjective dexterous, meaning â€Å"clever, skillful.† Right itself means â€Å"good, correct,† and that’s the originally connotation when referring to the right hand it’s the correct one to use. Among the many idioms suggesting the positive connotation are â€Å"right-hand man† and â€Å"the right stuff.† (The use of right and leftto refer to political ideology, each often capitalized when referring to adherents as a collective, came from the revolutionary era in France: The conservative party in the National Assembly called itself the Droit, the â€Å"right† party. The liberal faction, in opposition, came to be referred to as the â€Å"left.†) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Great Similes from Literature to Inspire YouPeace of Mind and A Piece of One's Mind5 Tips to Understand Hyphenated Words