I've heard the expression "let's cross that bridge a little further down the road" to convey something I understand a bit like: "let's take that difficult decision a bit later" or "let's take on that challenge a bit later". Can the expression be interpreted like that? Any other ideas?
Learn English – Expression “let’s cross that bridge a little further down the road”
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You can use other verbs with the phrase. Go is the most common, but you can also quit cold turkey, or kick something cold turkey. There may be others.
As to the phrase's origin, Etymonline favors the "quick preparation" theory and indicates there was a period of time where it was not associated with kicking a bad habit. It also curiously Cf.'s cold shoulder:
cold turkey "without preparation," 1910; narrower sense of "withdrawal from an addictive substance" (originally heroin) first recorded 1921. Cold turkey is a food that requires little preparation, so "to quit like cold turkey" is to do so suddenly and without preparation. Cf. cold shoulder.
Here's the entry on cold shoulder:
cold shoulder 1816, in the figurative sense of "icy reception," first in Sir Walter Scott, probably originally a literal figure, but commonly used with a punning reference to "cold shoulder of mutton," considered a poor man's dish and thus, perhaps, something one would set out for an unwanted guest with deliberate intention to convey displeasure.
How often have we admired the poor knight, who, to avoid the snares of bribery and dependence, was found making a second dinner from a cold shoulder of mutton, above the most affluent courtier, who had sold himself to others for a splendid pension! ["No Fiction," 1820]
I'll do a search for first usages.
Edit:
Found the 1910 reference from The Trail of '98 by Robert William Service, though it's not clear to me how exactly the phrase is being used in this passage:
Couldn't find any reference before this. I'll keep looking for first drug reference.
While oddly enough is used most often to introduce something that is counterintuitive (and much less often in an ironic sense), I have only very rarely heard or seen shockingly enough used outside of a context similar to this:
Shockingly enough, Albanian is spoken mostly in Albania.
That use can be described as "ironic" in much the same way as a TI class supertanker can be described as "sort of a large canoe". Far from indicating any degree of shock, the phrase is most often used to point out the blindingly obvious.
That is not to say that it is never used in a literal sense. When it is used without irony, it is not usually an understatement:
Shockingly enough, most of the actual violence is carried out by school-age children and not by the veterans of the gang because of laws limiting the sentences of juvenile offenders.
In both phrases, enough is probably superfluous, but it is idiomatic, particularly when the phrase is used ironically.
Best Answer
"Let's not worry about that until further down the road," and "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it" are two ways to idiomatically express "Let's defer that until later, and stay focused on the topic at hand right now."
The phrasing you gave sounds like a combination of those two idiomatic expressions - be it inadvertent or deliberate (much like when someone says "ginormous")