[Dragaera] I reviewed Hawk. :-/

[Philip Hart via Dragaera]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2014, Jon Lincicum wrote:

> You raise a good point, however. It would be very difficult to literally 
> hamstring a yendi, given that they do not have legs. This /would/ work 
> very well as a euphemisum for a very difficult or impossible task.
>

> In the context of the original quote, given this meaning, it would seem 
> to me that "being ordered to do what is impossible but deliberately 
> missing" could mean being ordered to kill Dolivar, or possibly to force 
> a confession, but deliberately failing. This doesn't seem to change the 
> meaning significantly of the part of the phrase in question.

It might in context be a funny way of saying, "Convince him to fly right". 
Then the context might mean, "I was asked to convince him to come to his 
senses but I actually told him I agreed with him."  Or maybe it's a cant 
phrase meaning the opposite of what one would expect.

Compare "break the stick".  It must be pretty hard for an Easterner to 
absorb all of Dragaaeran idiom, and harder to translate it into English.