Proverb: omlets are not made without breaking eggs (antedating 1796 May)

[victor steinbok]

Also note that I got 5 different hits from 1721 to 1794 and all have
slightly different first parts (the second part is the same because
that's what I searched for). So it is quite possible that the
expression did not come from French either and was translated
differently. Or, else, the meaning was preserved, but the expression
itself did not become proverbial until the French Revolution.

VS-)

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 4:04 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it possible it was already an old proverb in 1721??
>
>
> http://goo.gl/BKMLF
> Dictionnaire universel françois et latin. 1721
> Aumelette, p. 733
>> On dit proverbialement, on ne fait point d'aumelette sans casser des œufs, pour marquer qu'il y a certaines chôfes absolument néceflàires pour l'éxécution des affaires.
>
> My French is nonexistent, so I'll leave to to someone else to correct
> the diacritics and figure an exact translation.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Ken Hirsch <kenhirsch at ftml.net> wrote:
>>
>> Here it is in a letter from 1748, again in a French military context:
>>
>>
>> On ne sçauroit faire d'Omelette sans casser des oeufs
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=WVs2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA120&dq=%22sans+casser%22
>

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