bukary on 28/2/2007 at 18:12

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Thank you! :)

Any other ideas about this "cow" sentence?

bukary on 28/2/2007 at 18:24

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:D

Perhaps it is somehow connetecd to: cow = slow, train = fast. To glimps a cow from a train is not that big of an achievement, right? ;)

Hewer on 28/2/2007 at 18:30

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If you're entering a contract, legal disclaimers and other important information is often included in the contract in very small print. This is because the small print is hard to read (and usually there's a lot of it), and most people won't take the time. This 'small print' can drastically alter the contract, providing loopholes and setting conditions that you're not aware of unless you actually read the small print.

It's usually expressed as something like: "Read the small print", or "Watch the small print". It means that you need to be careful or else you'll get into something you weren't expecting.


I've never heard of the glimpse a cow one. I would guess it means something like: modern people with all our technology getting a glimpse of the way things used to be and thinking it's quaint. Like city people who go camping, and learning how to light and cook over a campfire seems novel and fun, when it used to be a mundane task.

hopper on 28/2/2007 at 19:07

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Judging from the other phrases you mentioned, I'd say there's no metaphorical meaning to look for here. All of these phrases mean exactly what they say, they're just informal expressions, so I'd say Ulukai's post, whether he meant to be sarcastic or not, hit the mark.

demagogue on 28/2/2007 at 19:43

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I'm thinking Uncle Bacon is on the right track (unintentional bad pun).

I've never heard this exact phrase, but it seems wrong to take it literally in this situation. Anyway, it's among a list of idioms (a fixed phrase is called an idiom). It sounds to me in the same family as "Missing the forest for the trees". So this "forest" phrase, if you don't already know, means you have your eyes on the small details of an event so you are missing the big picture of what's really going on, like you're paying so much attention to the characters' problems in a movie that you miss the overall plot.

The idea with glimpsing a cow from a moving train, the way I'm reading it, sounds like you are on your way to understanding the thing ("seeing the forest"), except instead of small details vs. big details, when you'd use the "forest" idiom, it's rushed vs. clear perspective. At first, you are being swept along in events that are rushing by too fast to "get it", but then suddenly a part of it resolves and makes sense and you get it. You see the cow.

So an example of when you'd use this is, say you were a investment analyst or whatever, and there was some new development in the economy -- like the introduction of the internet and people start investing in online ventures, hoping to cash-in. And then you want to know what advice to give clients, wondering how much to invest in this new thing. But things are happening so fast that you (and everyone else) don't know what's really going on at first, where to put your money, or how optimistic to be in the long run (especially when you see overnight millionares playing the market).

But then after a while, after tracking the business and keeping up with the newspapers, you suddenly "get it" and a trend resolves. It dawns on you that way too much money is being invested with way too little oversight, and you see that it's a bubble market and that eventually it's going to pop and investors will lose a lot of money. So you start being less enthusiastic and start advising your clients to avoid the hype and not invest as much or as quickly as they might like. And when people ask why, this is just the situation that you'd want to give them this kind of expression, "Suddenly I glimpsed a cow from the moving train," the cow being the actual, long-term prospects of investing in online ventures (a bubble getting ready to pop) and the moving train being people's perception of it, with all the distorting rush of the hype and glam of overnight millionaire stories.