Throw 'throwing him under the bus' out!

If there's a phrase in English that has really gone off the rails and needs to be shunted back into the yard, it has to be 'Throwing him under the bus'. For starters, no one ever makes the threat, 'I'll throw you under the bus!' simply because causing harm to someone to gain advantage shows the thrower in very poor light. Instead, the phrase is used - and overused - to describe a third party. And barring the criminally minded - like the family in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, earlier this month, which 'punished' a young man for eloping with a girl by pushing him in front of an approaching bus - no one actually does the dastardly deed since buses ply in crowded areas with witnesses galore.

The supposed origin of the phrase, as with most things illogical, is in 1980 Britain, when Financial Times' Elinor Goodman wrote: 'Some still pin their hopes on the 'under the bus' theory which has Mr [Michael] Foot being forced by ill health - or just the pressures of the job - to give way to Mr [Denis] Healey before the next election.' Which means the 'push comes to shove' under large tyres precedes Goodman's report on Thatcher-era Labour Party politics. By the time of the Obama vs McCain US election in 2008, 'under the bus' appeared more than 400 times in that campaign coverage. Let the phrase be thrown under the vacuum cleaner for everyone's BEST - and DTC.