Zabít dvě mouchy jednou ranou

” Literally translated as “

,” this phrase has a more or less direct equivalent in English: “

“

Now, if you were to walk out into Old Town Square one summer afternoon and start lobbing paving stones at pigeons in the hope of bludgeoning two of the creatures at once, chances are you would soon find it to be the exact kind of activity frowned upon by each of the representatives of the many nations there congregated. Likely as not, you would not be met with quite the same universal opprobrium if you were to whack a couple of fugitive flies in a cafe – after all, even that prototype of relatively peacable oriental wisdom, Mr. Miyagi, takes to bumping off flies as sport, not to mention Nobel prize winning Barack Obama’s notoriously nimble preemptive strike on a fly in an interview. Whose language is the more violent now?! Flies are one thing, but birds? Ok, so I’ll as happily eat a decent bit of game as the next man, but then there’s the issue of stones, because however galling it may be to chomp down on a piece of wild duck or pheasant and break a gnasher or three with a piece of shot, aren’t even pheasants sufficiently evolved to be exempt from such primitive brutality as stone throwing?

As we will see again and again, of course, idioms in all languages offer a kind of fly-in-amber glimpse at past customs and attitudes. Since they are repeated as single phrases, usually with little or no thought to their original contexts, they are much slower to adapt to cultural changes than individual words. As with “zlom vaz” and its English equivalent “break a leg,” the English version of this phrase, meaning to accomplish two tasks/goals with the same action, has long outlasted what literal relevance it may once have held.

As far as the English phrase is concerned, there are various explanations for its origin. In Chinese the phrase “one stone, two birds” remains, and is most likely derived from the use of a slingshot. An alternative origin, relating to Greek myth, involves the imprisoned Daedelus resourcefully killing two birds with one stone in order to fashion a pair of artificial wings to enable him and Icarus to fly home.

It must similarly be possible to attempt to untangle the etymology of the Czech phrase, but since it is relatively widespread, with identical phrases extant in numerous languages, and, since it is, as far as idioms go, pretty self-explanatory, we will restrict ourselves to picking apart the more useful features of the grammar.

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