English is a weird language.

He’s pushing her buttons. She’s pushing the limits. They’re pushing up daisies now.

So many ways of pushing that don’t really mean pushing in the literal sense. Except maybe the pushing up daisies one, I guess. Depending on a cemetery layout.

There’s one I can’t really wrap my arms around though and that’s “She’s pushing the envelope.” Because I’m an English-y person — all hail the Oxford comma, I’ll die on this hill — I know it means testing limits, pushing boundaries, that sort of thing. But it still made me pause because my pea brain kept picturing sliding an envelope across a table and like, big deal? What’s so groundbreaking about that?

Because my English-y self is super dorky I googled it and it said something about engineering and mathematics and how an envelope is a boundary or some such thing. That may make the saying a little easier to understand but no easier to explain without opening myself up to pesky questions I cannot answer about the inner workings of the numbers game.

Without pushing the envelope. I guess.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is “envelope.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!