|
Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “It’s a matter of days before heads will roll,” he said. My comments: He simply said some people will lose their jobs. It will happen soon, perhaps in the next few days. “Heads will roll” is just another, an emphatic expression for severe punishment. In other words, no real heads will be chopped off. And by “heads will roll”, he probably means that some people in positions of power will be sacked to account for some unfortunate event that’s just happened. That’s how one interprets a statement like that, because whenever you see the term “head will roll”, you usually infer that somebody’s going to get the sack for negligence at work, especially dereliction of duty, or some other wrong doing. Or someone in a leadership position may choose to resign instead of waiting for the sack. “Heads” in “heads will roll” are real heads originally. When the human head is seen rolling like a ball on the ground, it has to have been severed from the neck, right? Correct. This phrase is inspired from observing ancient executions where people were beheaded – having their head chopped off by a huge knife. These days, prisoners take a bullet to the back of the head or a lethal injection, but in the olden days it was more brutally done. Or at least it looked less humane, as members of the public who liked to watch an event like this, a rare occasion to be sure, watched the prisoner’s head roll tumbling to the ground, in horror and excitement. | 
