USA Today on "sucks "

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU
Fri Sep 30 03:39:42 UTC 2005


On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:30:15 -0400, sagehen wrote:

>There used to be an expression -- haven't heard it in fifty years --
>"teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"  (or variations on the same
>image), meaning presuming to teach someone, who knows how better than
>you, to do sthg. But why "suck eggs"?

I believe "sucking eggs" was meant to stand in for any absurdly easy or
self-evident task, of the kind that would already be obvious to your
grandmother. The expression dates to 1707, but the Oxford Dictionary of
English Proverbs provides similar turns of phrase from the 17th century:

  Teach your grandame to grope her ducks, 1611.
  ("Grope" = "to handle poultry in order to find whether they have eggs")

  Teach your grandame to sup sour milk, 1670.

Henry Churchyard's site on Regency illustrations has a wonderful George
Cruikshank cartoon from 1829 ("The Age of Intellect") which illustrates
the saying quite literally:

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/gmsukegs.gif

See also Michael Quinion's World Wide Words:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tea1.htm


--Ben Zimmer



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