Remember the Alamo

Redrawing 'a line in the sand'

DELIVERING A COMMENCEMENT speech at Furman University in South Carolina last month, President Bush paid tribute to several natives of that state, including "the brave colonel who drew a line in the sand against oppressive rule at the old Spanish mission called the Alamo."

He meant Col. William Travis, who, legend says, drew a line with his sword and asked his men who would cross it to stand with him in a fight to the death against the Mexican army.

And in figurative use, that line is a limit or an ultimatum - as when the first President Bush responded to Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait by "drawing a line in the sand" and sending troops to turn back Iraq's forces. But that sense has apparently been shifting in recent years. When Newton Mayor David Cohen declared this spring that the escalating price tag for a new high school would go no higher than $197.5 million - and called the number "a line in the sand" - Douglas Leith of Newton e-mailed to ask how the phrase should be interpreted.

"I tend to think of 'a line in the sand' as one easily or soon washed away, thus essentially useless," said Leith. He noted that a cartoon in the local paper played on that sense, showing the mayor's successive lines in the sand threatened by the lapping waves. But he had checked it out and discovered the opposite, "absolute limit" meaning as well.

Not everyone bothers to look it up, though. One blogger mocks "line in the sand" as the "dumbest phrase ever," since waves, wind, and time will surely erode such a line. "If you want to draw a line to separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, USE SOMETHING OTHER THAN SAND," she exhorts.

But this just shows that "a line in the sand," like "crossing the Rubicon" and "procrustean bed," is a phrase that needs its back story.

You can grasp the import of "a house built on sand" even if you've never read Jesus' words about the foolish man who constructed it. You know that a message "written in sand" is temporary, even if you never sang along to the Pat Boone oldie, "Love Letters in the Sand."

To understand "line in the sand," though, you need to know that the sand is incidental - it's the line that's essential. In fact, various accounts of the Battle of the Alamo have Colonel Travis scratching his line in the dirt, the earth, the dust, the ground, and even the floor.

He wasn't the first. Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror of Peru, is also supposed to have drawn a line in the sand, in 1527, and asked his men to choose: Go with him to Peru in search of fame and treasure, or turn back to the safety of Panama. In the 1799 play "Pizarro," Richard Brinsley Sheridan says the hero "drew a line upon the sands, and said, 'Pass those who fear to die or conquer with their leader.' "

There are other legendary linesmen. William Safire, in his syndicated language column, told of the Roman consul who faced down a Macedonian invader by drawing a circle in the sand around him. The Spartans are alleged to have drawn a line in the sand at Thermopylae, as is a Maori leader in New Zealand's Musket Wars.

But sand, clay, or dust, the point is not that the medium is impermanent, that the line will erode or shift. It's a gritty detail that shows this declaration is a marker laid down in the thick of the action, not a line on a map in a distant headquarters.

Nor is it the metaphorical line one draws at something; that phrase is much more likely to express a personal choice than a sober challenge. "I love my big sister," Ashlee Simpson told the Daily Mail in a recent interview, "but I draw the line at mud wrestling with her" (for a Rolling Stone photo).

Luckily, "a line in the sand" is a metaphor that comes with its own handy mnemonic device. If you aren't sure which interpretation is right, all you have to do is remember the Alamo.

. . .

IF, WHETHER, OR NOT? Grammar Girl, the popular usage podcaster, offers "quick and dirty" usage advice, most of it reliably mainstream. But her recent treatment of whether and if has me stumped.

In my experience, the only real problem in the "whether/if" department is that overzealous editors sometimes delete an obligatory "or not." But Grammar Girl sees another potential problem. She claims these sentences have different meanings:

Squiggly didn't know whether Aardvark would arrive on Friday or Saturday.

Squiggly didn't know if Aardvark would arrive on Friday or Saturday.

I don't see it, but I'd like to know if readers do (without the aid of Grammar Girl); please send explanations (or exclamations!) to freeman@globe.com.