This was pointed out to me yesterday–a lot of people have tattoos that bear the image of an anchor with the accompanying text “Refuse to sink” to some variation of the same.
Now, think about this while looking at a sample:
“Refuse to sink” is obviously meant as an affirmative phrase, so hooray for that. Affirmative phrases are good!
What is an anchor’s primary function? To anchor a water-going vessel–you know, a boat or ship. Perhaps a very fancy floating log. How does the anchor perform this function? By sinking to the bottom of the body of water and dragging/getting stuck in the muck/rocks along the bottom.
An anchor’s purpose is to sink. If an anchor did the opposite–float–it would be completely useless.
You see where this is going.
This is like the people using literally to mean figuratively.
“I literally just walked a million miles to get here.”
A “refuse to sink” anchor is as logical as a “refuse to fly” airplane. Perhaps the airplane secretly wants to be a truck. I don’t know. Who am I to judge? But really, this is kind of silly. I’m just wondering how this expression–which perhaps would be better-accompanied by an image of a buoy–becamse so popular, especially as a hard-to-remove tattoo.
The most generous take I have for now is people are weird.
