[Lexicog] Bees Wax

[Kenneth C. Hill]

"Mind your own bees wax" was an expression I learned as a child meaning "Mind your own business" (not very funny even then). Is this childish play on words Shakespearean?

--Ken Hill

--- On Fri, 7/3/09, bolstar1 <bolstar1 at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: bolstar1 <bolstar1 at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Lexicog]  Bees Wax
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, July 3, 2009, 10:21 AM











    
            
            


      
      I have a question for anyone who might know why the OED, Random House, Merriam (dictionary & "Coined by Shakespeare" Merriam) don't list Shakespeare as having coined the word/phrase "bees-wax" or "mind your own bees wax." I know that everyone in Elizabethan times knew where wax for officially sealing various correspondences came from, but coinage being what is is (the first recorded use of a term/expression) it's puzzling that  the first listing in OED (online) lists the first use in 1676 -- MOXON Print lett. 12 "You may rub your stone over with little Bees Wax."; Merriam lists 1664, Random lists 1670). 

     Yet II Henry VI 4.2.81-84 (1590-91) reads, "Some say the bee stings, but I say, 'tis the bee's wax: for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since."  I must be not be able to see the Amazon jungle for the trees. 



Scott N.




 

      

    
    
	
	 
	
	








	


	
	


      
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