Picture a workplace scene where deadlines are looming and everyone is scrambling to complete a critical project. However, an employee (let's call him Marco) is sitting at his desk, carefully sorting paper clips by color.
In Italian, you can compare Marco's participation in a meaningless and trivial activity to Comb the doll's hairliterally Help the doll comb her hair.
Comb the doll's hair
waste time on meaningless things
This idiom is used to describe someone who wastes time on meaningless or trivial activities instead of focusing on urgent or important tasks. In English we have some expressions that express similar ideas, such as:
- twiddling thumbs
- hang out
- Violin while Rome Burns
- flogging a dead horse
Stop combing your doll's hair! This project will not complete itself!
Stop wasting time/messing around! This project will not complete itself!
Other activities that may fall into the following categories Comb the doll's hair Including spending too much time on the computer doing nothing, wasting time scrolling through social media posts, or like my son did yesterday, digging up rocks instead of mowing our front lawn!
Why Comb the doll's hairyou may ask? Well, according to sapere.itThere are two reasons for this: First, combing a doll's hair is a repetitive and seemingly pointless activity that little girls often engage in when they have no other games to play. Second, traditionally female activities have historically been undervalued compared to male activities, making them seem more trivial.
A very common expression containing this idiom is:
We are not here to comb the doll’s hair!
We are not here to waste time/fool around!
The interesting thing about this particular expression is that many people use Comb the doll's hair There are many other so-called useless activities, including:
- We're not here to spot leopards > spotted leopard = Remove spots from leopard
- We're not here to get our nails done. > redo our nails = do our nails
- We're not here to straighten bananas > straighten the banana = straighten banana
- We're not here to dry rocks. > dry the rocks = dry the rock
- We're not here for candy > eat candy = eat candy
- We're not here to make cookies > Make cookies = Make cookies
- We're not here to make monkeys dance > make monkey dance = make monkey dance
- We are not here for ants to cross > Let the ants pass = Let the ants cross the road
This sentence is very common Go and comb the doll's hair! Shout out to those who could use their time better.
Go and comb the doll's hair!
Go do something more useful!
Heather Broster is a graduate with honors in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, fluent in English and Italian, as well as varying degrees of fluency in Japanese, Welsh and French. Originally from Toronto, Heather has lived in several countries, notably Italy for six years. Her main research areas are language acquisition, education and bilingual teaching.
