Received wisdom tells us that a swan can break your arm. Image, Pjt56, some rights reserved.
Writing in the 1870s, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote a series of short satirical pieces, published as the Dictionary of Received Ideas, in which he mocks the conventional everyday wisdom that many French people believed but had no proof of. He called these Received Ideas because almost everyone believed them, but no one could quite say where they first heard them any many had no actual direct experience of them. He brilliantly exposed the ridiculous fads and trite sayings that were common across French Society.
In Britain there are similar ‘received ideas’; whenever anyone mentions a swan someone will say “be careful they can break your arm!” How many actual arms have been broken by swans is unclear. Other examples are familiar — it is common practice to call British émigrés ex-pats (particularly the ones living in Spain), though no one knows why any more.
