The hungry ghost explained

… and that’s why he’s hungry

…or so I thought, until I did more research…

Let me explain. I was surfing the net for inspiration for my next cartoon.  Sometimes I like to draw cartoons that play on words or phrases.  I found myself on an idiom site that listed popular sayings, of which ‘hungry ghost’ was one of them. I hadn’t heard of the saying before and the site didn’t offer an explanation, so I just assumed it referred to someone who is always hungry – just like a ghost would be because the food goes straight through them.

Well, I was wrong and should have realised that I was being a bit too literal with my interpretation.  After drawing the cartoon I hunted the web for a definition and it didn’t take me long to find out how wrong I was.  For those of you as unfamiliar with this one as I was, here’s what dictionary.com said

‘in Buddhism, a supernatural being filled with more desire than it can consume’

and provided this example

‘The hungry ghost is often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth, a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfil their illusory physical desires.’

Have you ever misinterpreted some of those funny english sayings before?

Share, we’ll both have a laugh together.