Another question from Tintin's Flight 714. At a particular time, Professor Calculus started acting very foolishly in front of some respectable people. So, Captain Haddock, Calculus's friend, whispered into the professors' ears:
Isn't it time you stopped acting the goat?
I read it in my mind as:
Isn't it the time you stopped acting like the goat?
I admit, during speaking, people can forget the "the" and "like" (although I wouldn't have forgotten adding the "like"), but using "the" before "goat" seems a blunt grammatical mistake. I think it should be "a" instead of "the". It could have been "the" if Haddock was comparing the Homo sapiens (human) species with the Capra aegagrus hircus species. But he was comparing a human from the human species with just a goat from the goat species. So it should be "a" instead of "the". How come then Haddock used "the" instead of "a"? Or is it just a simple error while speaking?
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