Does “broke your head” mean literally breaking things?
I was reading Tom Brown’s School Days, and I came across the part where they were describing a sport called backswording, in which the competitors will have their left hand tied to their back, and they will have a stick with their right arm. The aim of the game, is to break the head of your opponent, who is also tied up and armed in like manner.
How much damage does it feel to be a bad person when he breaks his opponent’s head? How could your brain be broken when you blunder? Does a person normally break the skin on his head?
In both cases, blood must flow, that I know, and the loser of the game is when any amount of blood flow down his forehead, or anywhere above his eyebrows, and is seen….
What does “break one’s head” mean?
How and why be there?
The loser of the game
is when any amount of blood, no matter how little, flows down his forehead, or anywhere above his eyebrows, and is seen.
What is meant by bleed from the head? A common sense explanation? Why is this an established idiom? NGrams certainly shows some usage for variants on the phrase :
I suspect that most uses are referring to breaking the skin but I didn’t check.
If I were very young (London, in the 60’s) I find cracking my head open a common expression, which I found disturbing and I imagined horrible wounds.
When I cut my head on the corner of a desk at school, and needed stitches, I was distressed to hear the teacher tell my mom on the phone “he’s cracked his head open”, because I was concerned that she would think it was much worse than it was.
