by Kevin Burton
American farm country has fed the world and supplied it with a number of mud-caked idioms, as we have seen with the help of Merriam-Webster.
Today we bring it all home with our third and final installment of Barnyard Idioms.
We start with an idiom touching on my job during my farm-kid days in Severy, Kansas, gathering eggs:
Put All One’s Eggs in One Basket
Definition – to risk all one has on the success or failure of one thing
The egg lends itself well to idioms, some of which have survived better than others. The success of each phrase’s survival seems to be unpredictable; teach your grandmother to suck eggs is still pretty common, even though very few grandmothers are doing this, while as an egg is full of meat (meaning “to a considerable extent”) is now quite obscure, even though Shakespeare used it. Put all one’s eggs in one basket (and assorted variants) has been in use for over three hundred years, and it looks like it will stick.
Definition – to become very angry, upset, etc.
This idiom is perhaps best known as a catchphrase of Bart Simpson, the lovable rapscallion of the television show The Simpsons (he is frequently heard admonishing others to not have a cow). Have a cow predates The Simpsons, having been in use since the middle of the 20th century. It is thought to have come from the earlier British expression to have kittens (”to become very nervous or upset about something”).
Definition – used to express strong disagreement or to suggest something cannot happen
Sometimes the eye is not the body part of the pig being referenced; in a pig’s snout, in a pig’s ear, and others are occasionally found.
Chickens Come Home to Roost
Definition – used of person’s past actions that are causing him or her to experience problems in the present
The sense of roost employed here (“to settle down for rest or sleep”) is not now one of the more common ones. Chickens do, in fact, come home to roost, as do most people.
Separate the Wheat from the Chaff
Definition – to judge which people or things in a group are bad and which ones are good
Most people are familiar with the wheat portion of this expression, but it is likely that few of us are as familiar with the word chaff. The relevant definition of chaff is “the glumes, husks, or other seed coverings or small pieces of stems or leaves (as of grains and grasses) separated from the seed in threshing or processing,” and it was something to be separated from the edible wheat. Chaff is also occasionally found in a figurative sense, meaning “something comparatively worthless.”
Definition – for a very long time
Given that cows are not known for being the most adventurous and mundivagant of animals, it is rather peculiar that we should use their tardiness in getting home as an expression. But no one has ever (convincingly) accused the English language of making too much sense.
Buy the Farm
Definition – to get killed
There is much uncertainty as to why we say someone bought the farm to mean kicked the bucket (which also has considerable uncertainty regarding its origin). As is often the case in such circumstances people will offer possible explanations, of varying plausibility. Some of the ones suggested for buy the farm are that it is a variant of bought a plot (meaning a plot in a cemetery), or that when a plane has crashed into a farm the government will financially compensate the farmer for the damage.
Get One’s Goat
Definition – to make one angry or annoyed
Sometimes the goat is simply got, and sometimes it is got up; sometimes it is just a goat, and sometimes it is a nanny goat. We’d like to say that no actual goats were angered in the creation of this idiom, but to be honest we really aren’t sure, as the etymology is obscure.
Definition – to force (someone) to leave a job because of old age
Farmers have been putting animals out to pasture for many hundreds of years now. In some cases the phrase was used simply to indicate bringing the flock out to feed for the day, and in other cases it indicated that a particular animal was being retired from work, due to age or infirmity, and sent to the pasture. We began using this figuratively for people in the 19th century.
At this point we need Porky Pig to say his line, because that’s all folks!
Yes, we are finally putting this farm idioms series out to pasture. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two and that you got through the experience without stepping in something.
Page 7 