February 29th comes every U.S. Presidential election year. It is called Leap Year day. I pondered what we could do to celebrate this reaccuring phenomenon.
Should we sing along with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” when Frederic discovers that he was born on February 29th and the whole story turns on a most ingenious paradox?
Instead I thought we could play around with all the uses of the word “leap” in the English language. A study in cliches! Here is what I came up with (can you add more?):
Leap to mind
By leaps and bounds
Quantum leap
Leap Frog
Leap of Faith
Leap to conclusions (or jump to conclusions)
Leap at the opportunity
Leap for joy
Look before you leap
Leap in the dark
Or the famous statement by Neil Armstong, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
All our daughters are involved in the arts (music and dance) and two majored in Ballet and Dance Performance, respectively. Despite that, I know next to nothing about ballet other than how hard it is to perform at a high level. I did learn that ballet has a special vocabulary for their various moves. Ballet even has many different words for leap or jump. I looked them up… Jeté. Grand Jeté, Sissone, Pas de Chat, Sauté, Petit Saut, Emboîté, and Entrechat. Who knew? I usually just watched slack-jawed and said “wow, she jumped good…”
Your turn
Try your hand at a couple other words and see if you can list their various uses. Words like:
Basket
Fork
Time
Hit
