What this blog is for and about

This blog was oringally intended to help accustom Rusian su8ers of English to use the langauge with wit, accruacy and decorum. Now, it mainly concneres books that I recommend. I hope you find it useful.

26 March 2012

Common expressions #1: "to have a lightbulb"

In American cartoons of the 1950s and 60s the convention for illustrating pictorially the fact that someone had suddenly had a bright idea was to show a glowing light-bulb in a thought bubble right above the thinker's head. I witnessed something similar at the monthly networking meeting of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce last Friday in the Sheraton Palace Hotel on Tverskaya-Yamskaya.
     The special occasion was the introduction of the new Moscow Director, Alan Thompson, who comes from Edinburgh and is an old friend. I will say more about him and his organisation's activities in future posts, but for now, I want to show for the benefit of my Russian readers what you might expect to see if you were to be standing in front of a British businessman at the moment when he has a good idea. Look right! (Remember with all images, you can click on them to expand them.)
    The gentleman in the picture has not just had a bright idea, he has, as we say colloquially, "had a light-bulb"!

3 comments:

  1. We, Russians, tend to be more general in such “have a bright idea” situations. We just call that “illumination” (озарение) and don’t need a halo to prove it.

    Aliona Vanova

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought it was known as a 'lightbulb moment'

    ReplyDelete