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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'



 
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ESL Forum | English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
Opposite of "punctual" | Shadowy vs. shadowed
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:46 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

Hi

From my old A Picture Book of Idioms in Five Languages (1993):

He/she doesn’t snatch stars from the sky. – Russian version (in English translation)
He didn’t invent powder. – French, Spanish, Russian,..
He is not a great torch-bearer. – German

He won’t set the Thames on fire. - English

This English saying is obviously rises curiosity – why do you say it so – referring to the impossible event?

(Or maybe, 'set on fire' is used here in some indirect sense – in particularly, I saw old English pictures with great national celebrations (or grief for actually great persons, like Lord Nelson…) and the Thames on them can actually be viewed as being 'on fire'.

?
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He'll never set the Thames on fire Tue Sep 05, 2006 14:11 pm  He'll never set the Thames on fire
 

The phrase might originate from a Latin saying.

I think the Phrase Finder gives a reasonable (and interesting!) explanation:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/messages/596.html

Brewer’s dictionary also has an amusing entry on this:

Quote:
He’ll never set the Thames on fire. He’ll never make any figure in the world; never plant his footsteps on the sands of time. The popular explanation is that the word Thames is a pun on the word temse, a corn-sieve; and that the parallel French locution He will never set the Seine on fire is a pun on seine, a drag-net; but these solutions are not tenable. There is a Latin saw, “Tiberim accend re nequaquam potest,” which is probably the fons et origo of other parallel sayings. Then, long before our proverb, we had “To set the Rhine on fire” (Den Rhein anz?nden), 1630, and Er hat den Rhein und das Meer angez?ndet, 1580.

There are numerous similar phrases: as “He will never set the Liffey on fire;” to “set the Trent on fire;” to “set the Humber on fire;” etc. Of course it is possible to set water on fire, but the scope of the proverb lies the other way, and it may take its place beside such sayings as “If the sky falls we may catch larks.”
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 15:29 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

We don't have the Thames here in America, and we don't think about it much. We say instead, He won't set the world on fire. You can replace the world with other things, such as the engineering profession, his field, etc.

By the way, it's not impossible for a river to catch fire. In the 1970s, both the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, and the Rouge River in Michigan, became so polluted that they actually caught fire. Now they have been cleaned up, and people can actually fish in them.
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 15:51 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

So this means that that poor 'someone' hasn’t got enough 'internal fire' (talent, curiosity, etc.) to become actually great in doing something.

Now I see. In my language we say God’s spark for that.

Thank you!

Quote:
By the way, it's not impossible for a river to catch fire.
In the 1970s, both the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, and the Rouge River in Michigan, became so polluted that...

In this context 'He never...' sounds very... ecological. Smile
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 15:58 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

Tamara wrote:
Now I see. In my language we say God’s spark for that.

I find it amusing to hear Polish people say in English that something was done by "God's finger". In English, we say it was done by the hand of God.
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 16:28 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

Jamie (K) wrote:
We don't have the Thames here in America, and we don't think about it much.

We do have the Thames River in America, Jamie. You can find it in Connecticut. And as far as I know, it has never caught fire ...

... and the name rhymes with James. Laughing
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'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire' Tue Sep 05, 2006 18:53 pm  'He won’t/never set the Thames on fire'
 

Jamie (K) wrote:
I find it amusing to hear Polish people say in English that something was done by "God's finger".

In Russian we also use it for the hand of God (= божья воля)
Not with the ordinal finger, but only and always with the very old word for 'finger' - перст. (By the way, the word 'перстень' - finger ring - is still in use.)

But generally 'перст божий' (finger of God) sounds very… churchly and in colloquial speech it is always used a bit ironically.

Coming back to the (another) saying God’s spark – if you say something like 'Certainly, God had kissed him at his birth' then an average Russian more likely understands it as 'he is actually gifted/talented, there is the God’s spark inside him'.
But some people might also take it as an equivalent for the idiom 'be born under a lucky star', be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth', etc.
Briefly - for jammy = lucky (British slang Smile )
Very Happy
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