The Cockles of My Heart

So I was reading the paper this morning and I came across the phrase “cockles of my heart.” I have always been fond of clichés, but I still had to ask myself, “What’s a cockle, and why would I want one in my heart?”

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a cockle can be a small boat, the shell of a mollusk (or the mollusk itself), a weed, or a pucker (or the verb to pucker). Now that I know what a cockle is, I still have to ask, “Why would I want one in my heart?”

Ah, but don’t we just love clichés, those phrases we use daily and have no clue what they mean. My all time favorite? “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Who would want their cake if they couldn’t eat it too? What possible good is cake if you don’t eat it?

And a related bit of trivia: Do you know that the word “Webster” is not copyrighted, trademarked, or otherwise registered or restricted? That’s right. Anybody can produce a dictionary and call it Webster’s. So the next time you hear some high school kid start a speech “According to Webster...” you’ll have another reason to dread everything that is likely to follow, aside from the fact that the kid is starting off with a cliché. (It can only go downhill from there.)