Living with someone from the other side of the world (think Desiree here), makes you consider the things you say a lot more. For one thing, we constantly use common phrases and clichés that simply don’t translate. Regularly, after hearing one phrase or another, Desiree will ask: “What does that mean.”
The
other day when I said something about “warming my cockles,” the thought
occurred that even I had no idea what that really meant. I know it means, in a general sense, something
pleases you.
But why
cockles?
A
little prodding at the fluffy layers of information on the internet provided me
with more details. In the full idiom, something
is said to "warm the cockles of our heart."
The
heart is key to meaning. A ‘cockle’ in
this phrase is something of a slang term for the chambers (ventricles) of our
heart. This name is derived from the Latin
"cochleae cordis", from "cochlea" (snail), alluding to
their shape.
Honestly,
I imagined something more exotic, if not sexy, behind the meaning of cockles.
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