Any obstacle arising on the way of achievement of a certain important purpose, people call a stumbling block. However very few people know about sources of emergence of this expression having as it appears, very religious roots.
Pretknovenny temptation
It agrees bible the writing, the boulder which arose on command of God in Zion, the so-called "Rock of temptation", was designed to block a way to turncoats, to force them to pretykatsya, stumble about it. For the first time this expression meets in lines of the New Testament. On stumbling blocks on the way to Judea the people experienced serious difficulties.
Expression "stumbling block" being treated as insuperable or difficult surmountable obstacle in a way to achievement of the goal.
Often a stumbling block call the Divine, just spirit and strict religious laws rejected by sinners and those who refuse a just way of life.
Today the similar idiom is rather distributed in the sphere of business and concerns generally slow course of the bureaucratic machinery putting obstacles to achievement of the goals.
Substitution of concepts
Often this expression journalists dexterously play, sometimes, without understanding true value and origin these are phrases. Expression "stumbling block" is substituted for applecontentionthe phrase " " making absolutely other sense and accepted to underline insignificance of a source of the conflict. Expression "apple of discord" has the Greek roots and, most likely, was taken from myths and legends of this country. Apple is only a peculiar reason for further escalation of the conflict and emergence of its serious consequences literally from nothing, out of the blue, without any visible reasons while the stumbling block serves as the dilemma interfering accession of peace and demanding considerable expenses of forces and time rather.
It is curious that in pre-revolutionary dictionaries the application of expression in the speech was illustrated the following phrase: "The woman is the main stone pretknoven_ya v dyatelnost of a chelovk"
It is not necessary to confuse a stumbling block with the cornerstone which was initially serving as a symbol of laying of the base of the building and only then received value of the defining factor having a huge impact on development anything also. For this reason at the use of both turns of speech it is necessary to think of the meaning of a phrase and to use each phrase according to a context. Before the use of a phraseological unit, the steady, developed combination of words, it is worth thinking of its sense and to know the history of its emergence better, to sort its structure. Sometimes the fact that it seems obvious and lying on a surface, unexpectedly surprises absolutely with other sense.