Goldsmithing

One instrument on this list has left the workshop for everyday speech. Die Goldwaage is the goldsmith’s precision balance, built for a metal where a fraction of a gram is money, and German puts words on it: jedes Wort auf die Goldwaage legen. The idiom points in two directions. Said of a diplomat or a press office, it describes wording chosen with great care — In der Erklärung war jedes Wort auf die Goldwaage gelegt. Said to a listener, nearly always with a negative, it is a reproach: stop taking things so literally. Leg doch nicht alles auf die Goldwaage, er hat es nicht so gemeint. In conversation the second use is by far the commoner, so the phrase is more often a gentle rebuke than praise. English has “to weigh every word” for the first sense and nothing as compact for the second; “don’t take it so literally” is the nearest.