Saturday, March 14, 2009

Flesh out vs flush out

Flesh out: put some meat on the bones by providing more details.

Flush out: drive from hiding by forays into possible hiding places.

When applied to plans, legislation, and so forth, these metaphors have different meanings, but I think that some people fail to distinguish between them. 

For example, someone might say, "Secretary Geithner has given an overview of how he wants to deal with the bad paper that banks are holding but I'd like to see that plan flushed out."  The speaker probably means fleshed out, but maybe Secretary Geithner is hiding details that he already knows but doesn't want to say. In that case, the flushing metaphor might be appropriate.

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