General Sentence of the day 5

Did you see the moonwalking bear?

Origins of the phrase The moonwalking bear refers to a perception test undertaken for the book “The Invisible Gorilla (and other ways our intuition deceive us)” (2011). The test set out to prove that our brains will only recognise things that we expect to see, sometimes missing the obvious. This has worrying implications for motorcycle drivers, amongst others.

Integration into the language The phrase ‘the invisible gorilla’ or ‘the moonwalking bear’ (a variation on the original test) have evolved to become idiomatic over time. This is a good example of a phrase that will become more and more common in the future as more people read the book and spread the word. It will possibly become an accepted and commonly used idiom over time. It came from literature initially, but the common repetition of it in spoken everyday language is what will (or will not) confirm its place as an accepted idiom over time.

Further reference y4