When you can’t get your own way, bow to the inevitable. The complete expression is, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.” This expression, with the spelling Mahomet (a slightly different transliteration from Arabic), is based on the story that Mohammed once asked for miraculous proof of his teachings and ordered Mount Safa to come to him. When the mountain did not move, he said, “God is merciful. Had it obeyed my words it would have fallen on us to our destruction.” Sir Francis Bacon retold the story, saying, “If the Hil will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the Hil” (in Of Boldnesse, 1597). It was repeated in John Ray’s English Proverbs (1678) and numerous sources thereafter, including Shaw’s play, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).

To exaggerate trifling problems. This English equivalent of the French faire d’une mouche un éléphant (make an elephant out of a fly) first appeared in 1570, in John Fox’s The Book of Martyrs. The legendary humorist Fred Allen played on it: “A vice-president in an advertising agency is a ‘molehill man’ who has until 5 p.m. to make a molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch” (Treadmill to Oblivion, 1954).