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Farm Saying Friday
December 24, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick IF WISHES WERE HORSES Meaning: Usually used to suggest that it is useless to wish; better results will be achieved through action.
Origin: Found in James Carmichael's “Proverbs in Scots” printed in 1628.\
The full Scottish proverb:
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
If turnips were swords, i'd wear one by my side
If ifs and ands were pots and pans,
there'd be no need for tinkers' hands"
There is however an older version, which was recorded in 1605 by William Camden in the book “Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine”, "If wishes were thrushes beggers would eat birds".
There are many variations to this saying, but here are two of the more popular;
A less common variant puts on a whimsical twist: "If wishes were fishes, beggars would fly." The implied idea is that if wishing made it so, one could ride a flying fish.
My personal favorite, "If if's and but's were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas."
Merry Christmas! May all your hard work pay off in the New Year!
Sources:
December 20, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick The last few weeks have been terribly busy with multiple trade shows and meetings. As such I wasn’t able to complete many Farm Saying Friday’s. The one I did When in Rome, was actually requested as Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sorry Paul! ROME WASN'T BUILT IN A DAY
Meaning: Important work takes time
Origin: This familiar saying was originally a French proverb, 'Rome was not made all in one day,' which was recorded in 'Li Proverbe au Vilain' (c. 1190). The English version did not appear until three centuries later, when it was included first in Richard Taverner's translation of 'Erasmus' Adages' as 'Rome was not buylt in one day’.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/18/messages/566.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
December 3, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick WHEN IN ROME While obviously not a farm saying, one of our dealers requested this one. Thanks Paul! Meaning: It is polite, and possibly also advantageous, to abide by the customs of a society when one is a visitor. Origin: Why should an English proverb single out Rome and Roman values as especially to be emulated? Couldn't we have had a 'when in Ipswich, do as the Ipswichians do' for example? As it turns out, it's all to do with the travel arrangements of a couple of early Christian saints.
St Augustine: Letters Volume I was translated from the Latin by Sister W. Parsons and published in 1951. Letter 54 to Januariuscontains this original text, which date from circa 390AD:
When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but here [Milan] I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.
Januarius, who was later canonised as a martyr saint, was Bishop of Naples at the time.
The above dates the source of the proverb to at least as early as the beginnings of the Christian church. The implied flexibility on dogma and acceptance of the religious and social practices of other cultures seems to be more akin to the contemporary Buddhist teachings of the Dalai Lama than those of present day Christian authorities.
The use of the proverb in English isn't recorded until much later - well into the Middle Ages.
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/when-in-rome-do-as-the-romans-do.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
November 24, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick TALKING TURKEY Meaning: To speaking frankly, discussing hard facts, or getting down to serious business.
Origin: It’s first recorded in 1824, but is probably much older; one suggestion is that it goes back as far as colonial times. It is also suggested that it arose because the first contacts between Native Americans and settlers often centered on the supply of wild turkeys, to the extent that Indians were said to have enquired whenever they met a colonist, “you come to talk turkey?”
IN 1824 though it meant to speak agreeably, or to say pleasant things. Turkey gobbling was a distinct, natural sound on frontier farms. By 1830 the expression soon became 'to talk cold turkey', 'to speak bluntly' hence 'cold turkey' came to mean cold facts, unpleasant truths. By the 1940s 'cold turkey' was a drug addict’s term for a sudden and complete withdrawal from drugs (reinforced by the addict's goose bumps, resembling uncooked turkey skin).
I hope your Thanksgiving is full of warm turkey and pleasant conversation with family!
Happy Thanksgiving
Sources:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/2/messages/36.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991130
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tal1.htm
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
November 19, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
HEAD FOR THE HILLS Meaning: To Escape Origin: This idiom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom is as old as the Bible, Mark 13:14"As soon, however, as you see the Abomination of Desolation standing where he ought not" --let the reader observe these words--"then let those in Judaea escape to the hills;"
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
November 12, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick Last night I was flipping through the channels when I came to IPTV, they were playing the Sons of the San Joaquin. They specialize in old time country music, and ever since I was a kid and went to the Flying W Ranch as a kid on a summer vacation, I have always enjoyed old time country music. One of their songs the Sons played last night was titled The Prospector. While not a farm saying I found it entertaining, I hope you will too. THE PROSPECTOR They headed out the canyon late autumn in the snow.
The old prospector and his mule were loaded, traveling slow.
He'd buttoned down his collar; his hat was stuck down like glue.
And they headed straight for Elko, because, well, they wanted to.
He chewed a twist of something that would surely curl your hair.
His long gray beard matched his steel, gray eyes with their penetratin' stare.
He moved with calm demeanor, seemed fearless through and through
As they headed straight for Elko, because, well, they wanted to.
His mule was short and wiry; his face was long and sad.
He had a way of travelin' kind'a like his owner had.
They seemed to fit together, their partnership was true
As they headed straight for Elko, because, well, they wanted to.
When they hoofed it into Elko, a bunch of cowboys gathered 'round.
See, they'd just come off together, and they was a shootin' up the town.
When they spied that old prospector, they knew just what they'd do.
They circled up around him, because, well, they wanted to.
One asked the old prospector if he'd ever learned to dance.
"No," he said real cautious, "I ain't never had the chance."
So the cowboy pulled his six gun and said, "Well, I'm up to teachin' you!"
And he danced that night in Elko, just as if he wanted to.
Yes, he danced and dodged them bullets like a jumpin' jack
Until he counted six, then he ceased dancin', stepped quickly to his pack.
He held a shotgun in his hands, his voice was calm and cool.
He said, "Tell me something, Sonny, have you ever kissed a mule?"
The young man's face contorted as he pondered his disgrace,
And he stared with consternation at that shotgun in his face.
He swallowed hard before he spoke, his voice came sharply through,
He said, "No! I ain't never kissed no mule! But I've always wanted to!
JACK HANNAH
While I couldn't find the song online, you can listen to other songs by the Sons here. You can also catch the Son on Nov 25th, 2010 at 6:30 cst.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
October 29, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
Pheasant Hunting Season opens in Iowa this weekend. With harvest near complete many will be out enjoying the weather and wildlife. I thought a saying that refencnes guns was fitting. LOCK, STOCK, AND BARREL
Meaning: The whole thing.
Origin: It’s been suggested that this phrase refers to all of a shopkeeper's possessions - the stock in trade, the items stored in barrels and the lock to the door. This explanation is entirely fanciful though - the 'whole thing' in question when this phrase originated was a musket. Muskets were composed of three parts:
Given the antiquity of the three words that make up the phrase and the fact that guns have been in use since at least the Hundred Years' War in 1450, and even earlier in other countries e.g. China, we might expect it to be very old. In fact it isn't particularly; the earliest use of it appears to come from around the beginning of the 19th century.
Found in the USA in July 1803 in The Connecticut Centinel. The newspaper included a letter that reported on a celebration of the 4th of July, in the town of Stratford. The 30 men present carried a 'huge keg of rum' around the town and then drank toasts with 'full bumpers' [glasses filled to the brim] to:
1st: The 4th of July, 1776, the birthday of our ninepence...
2nd: Jefferson, Paine, Gallatin and all the rest...
[...]
6th: Patriotism - Self interest, the cock, lock, stock and barrel.
[and so on...]
After the 13th toast the records peter out, remarking that the company was 'over zealous' and 'celebrated all night'. The participants might have been 'feeling no pain' and possibly recalled little detail the next morning, but the writer seems to have noted the events precisely. His usage is clearly figurative rather than literal and as such is the earliest use of the phrase that I am aware of.
The inclusion of 'cock' [the firing hammer] lends additional weight to the argument that the allusion is to firearms. The colloquial use and lack of any explanation suggests that the phrase was in circulation in the USA in 1803 and earlier citations may well be found.
Rudyard Kipling came close to giving us a definition of the term in 1891, in Light That Failed:
"The whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy."
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lock-stock-and-barrel.html
October 22, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
TIL THE COWS COME HOME Meaning: For a long but indefinite time.
Origin: Cows are notoriously languid creatures and make their way home at their own unhurried pace. That's certainly the imagery behind 'till the cows come home' or 'until the cows come home', but the precise time and place of the coining of this colloquial phrase isn't known.
In Portuguese there is a current expression in these terms: "Deixe os patos passar". It means word by word: Let the ducks go by or pass along.
This is an ironical expression, whereby someone suggests that something will happen but certainly in a time that will never really come. The origin is probably from a fable in which a king promises to release a young man from death if he is able to tell him a never-ending story. And the astute young man tells a tale of ducks passing along in a stream. One duck follows the other, and the ducks never stop coming. So the story never reaches the end. Waiting for all the ducks to pass means waiting for ever.
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/382900.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
October 15, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
HARVEST MOON Meaning: The harvest moon is the moon at or about the period of fullness that is nearest to the autumnal equinox. The harvest moon is often mistaken for the modern day hunter's moon. Origin: All full moons rise around the time of sunset. In general the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. As it moves in orbit around Earth, the Harvest Moon and Hunter's Moon are special because, around the time of these half moons, the time difference between moonrise on successive evenings is shorter than usual. This means that the moon rises approximately 30 minutes later from one night to the next, as seen from about 40 degrees N. or S. latitude. Thus, there is no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise around the time following these full moons. In times past this feature of these autumn moons was said to help farmers working to bring in their crops (or, in the case of the Hunter's Moon, hunters tracking their prey). They could continue being productive by moonlight even after the sun had set. Hence the name Harvest Moon. The harvest moon comes soon before or soon after the autumnal equinox. It is simply the full moon closest to that equinox. About once every four years it occurs in October (in the northern hemisphere), depending on the cycles of the moon. Currently, the latest the harvest moon can occur is on October 7. When the night of the harvest moon coincides with the night of the equinox, it is called a "Super Harvest Moon." In 2010 in the contiguous United States, the harvest moon happened in the early morning hours of Sept 23, only 5 1/2 hours after the autumnal equinox, creating the first Super Harvest Moon since 1991. Why does the Harvest Moon seem larger? The apparent larger size is because the brain perceives a low-hanging moon to be larger than one that's high in the sky. This is known as a moon illusion and it can be seen with any full moon. It can also be seen with constellations; in other words, a constellation viewed low in the sky will appear bigger than when it is high in the sky. January – Wolf moon, Hunger moon, Old moon February – Snow moon, Ice moon March – Worm moon, Sap moon, Sugaring moon, Crow moon, Storm moon April – Pink moon, Egg moon, Grass moon, Rain moon, Growing moon, Wind Moon May – Flower moon, Planting moon, Milk moon, Hare moon June – Strawberry moon, Rose moon, Honey moon, Mead moon July – Buck moon, Thunder moon, Deer moon, Hay moon August – Sturgeon moon, Corn moon, Fruit moon, Barley moon September – Harvest moon Gypsy Moon October – Hunter's moon November – Beaver moon, Frosty moon, Snow moon December – Cold moon, Long Night moon, Winter moon
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
October 8, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
INDIAN SUMMER Meaning: An unseasonably warm, dry and calm weather, usually following a period of colder weather or frost in the late Autumn. Origin: Indian summer is first recorded in Letters From an American Farmer, a 1778 work by the French-American soldier turned farmer J. H. St. John de Crèvecoeur (a.k.a. Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur): "Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer."
The English already had names for the phenomenon - St. Luke’s Summer, St. Martin’s Summer or All-Hallown Summer, In Galicia (northern Spain), it is called Veraniño de San Martiño, and in Portugal it is called "Verão de São Martinho," both of which refer to St. Martin's summer. In Welsh, it is known as "Haf Bach Mihangel" or (St.) Michael's Little Summer - St. Michael's Day being on 29 September. In Lithuania this time is called "Bobu vasara", which translates to "summer of old ladies"
In Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and in Croatia it is called Women's Summer/Babye Leto. In Bulgaria, the phenomenon is sometimes called "Gypsy Summer", and in some places "Gypsy Christmas" and refers to unseasonably warm weather in late fall, or a warm spell in between cold periods.
In Sweden it is called "brittsommar", which is derived from Birgitta and Britta, who have their "name day" in the Swedish calendar on October 7. That is when Britt Mass, an official fall open-air market, was held.
In Germany and Austria it is called "Altweibersommer", in Hungary "vénasszonyok nyara" (Old Ladies' Summer or Crone's Summer) because the many white spiders seen at this time of the year have been associated with the norns of Norse folklore or medieval witches. In Flanders (Belgium) it is also called "Oudewijvenzomer" (Old Ladies' Summer) or "Trezekeszomer" ("St-Theresa's Summer -- St-Theresa's Day being on 15 October).
In Latvia this period is called "Atvasara", which translates to "re-summer" or "return/repeat/flashback of summer". In Turkey the term "pastirma yazi", meaning Pastrami Summer is used.
These have now all but disappeared and, like the rest of the world, the term Indian summer has been used in the UK for at least a century.
Why Indian? Well, no one knows but, as is commonplace when no one knows, many people have guessed. Here are a few of the more commonly repeated guesses:
• When European settlers first came across the phenomenon in America it became known as the Indian's Summer.
• The haziness of the Indian Summer weather was caused by prairie fires deliberately set by Native American tribes.
• It was the period when First Nations/Native American peoples harvested their crops.
• The phenomenon was more common in what were then North American Indian territories.
• It relates to the marine shipping trade in the Indian Ocean (this is highly dubious as it is entirely remote from the early US citations).
• It originated from raids on European settlements by Indian war parties, which usually ended in autumn.
• In a parallel with other 'Indian' terms it implied a belief in Indian falsity and untrustworthiness and that an Indian summer was an ersatz copy of the real thing.
Sources: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/indian-summer.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_summer
October 1, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick NIP IN THE BUD
Meaning: To deal with a problem when it is still small, before it can grow into something serious. Origin: This phrase clearly derives by allusion to the de-budding of plants. the earlier form of the phrase was 'nip in the bloom' and this is cited in Henry Chettle's romance "Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentiship" from 1595:
A version of the current 'bud' version of the phrase first appears in 1607, in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy "Woman Hater".
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
September 24, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
IN A COON’S AGE
I have been out traveling quite a bit the last two weeks. So have our masked furry friends. Raccoons are currently out looking for their winter homes and that has lead to a lot of dead one on the highway. With all those furry speed bumps in the road, how did “In a coon’s age” get its start?
Meaning: Coon's age is short for raccoon's age, meaning a very long time.
Origin: "A coon's age" is an Americanism recorded in 1843 and probably related to the old English expression 'in a crow's age,' meaning the same. "References differ, but a wild individual raccoon might live up to 5 to 7 years (average survival being much lower, though, probably 2-3 years), and in captivity they can live up to 14-17 years. So their lifespan is comparable to that of a dog." In the early 1800s, it's doubtful if anyone knew how long raccoons actually lived, and two to three years in the wild is not really very long. But raccoon fur is hardy and reasonably durable, which might have given rise to the belief of longevity.
As you may know, the "coon" came to mean a whole different thing unrelated to expression "in a coon's age." Coon was first a term for a white person from the country, and then it became an insulting term for a black person.
"Coon” was originally a short form for raccoon in 1741, then by 1832 meant a frontier rustic, and by 1840 a Whig. The 1834 song 'Zip Coon' (better known today as 'Turkey in the Straw') didn't refer specifically to either a White or a Black and the 'coon songs' of the 1840s and 50s were Whig political songs. By 1862, however, coon had come to mean a Black and this use was made very common by the popular 1896 song 'All Coons Look Alike to Me,' written by Ernest Hogan, a Black who didn't consider the word derogatory at the time." From "I Hear America Talking" by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976), Page 54.
Thanks to political correctness the use of “coon” is now generally considered offensive. However, if you are inclined not to use a coon's age because you think it refers to African Americans and not raccoons look at the dates and think again. On the other hand, it might be time to come up with a new term for "a long time" since the ones we have are more worn out than a month of Sunday’s!
For more info on Raccoons: http://icwdm.org/wildlife/raccoon.asp
Sources:
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
September 17, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
IN A PICKLE Meaning: In trouble or another mess Origin: Not literally meaning inside a cucumber soaked in vinegar, which we now think of as a pickle. In a pickle has a much darker background from the 1400's! The earliest pickles were spicy sauces made to accompany meat dishes. Later, in the 16th century, the name pickle was also given to a mixture of spiced, salted vinegar that was used as a preservative. The word comes from the Dutch or Low German pekel, with the meaning of 'something piquant'. Later still, in the 17th century, the vegetables that were preserved, for example cucumbers and gherkins, also came to be called pickles. The 'in trouble' meaning of 'in a pickle' was an allusion to being as disoriented and mixed up as the stewed vegetables that made up pickles. This was partway to being a literal allusion, as fanciful stories of the day related to hapless people who found themselves on the menu. The earliest known use of pickle in English contains such an citation. The Morte Arthure, circa 1440, relates the gory imagined ingredients of King Arthur's diet: He soupes all this sesoun with seuen knaue childre, Choppid in a chargour of chalke-whytt syluer, With pekill & powdyre of precious spycez.
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/in-a-pickle.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
September 9, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick SICK AS A DOG The past two weeks I have been fighting a terrible computer virus. I think I have it licked (huh.. beaten). To celebrate the return of FSF, I thought sick as a dog was fitting.
Meaning: To vomit like a dog
Origins: "Sick as a dog," which means "extremely sick" and dates to 1705. Anyone who knows dogs knows that while they can and often will eat absolutely anything. On those occasions when their diet disagrees with them the results can be quite dramatic. And while Americans may consider themselves "sick" when they have a bad cold, in Britain that would be called "feeling ill." "Being sick" in Britain usually means "to vomit."
So to really appreciate the original sense of "sick as a dog," imagine yourself seated in the parlor having tea with the Vicar on a lovely Sunday afternoon, when Fido staggers in from a meal of sun-dried woodchuck and expresses his unease all over your heirloom oriental carpet.!
Sources: http://www.word-detective.com/061202.html http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sic1.htm
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
August 27, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
THE BEE'S KNEES I missed last week's post due to a severe virus on my computer. This weeks post is a reader request, though it didn't originate on the farm, bee's are an integral part of agriculture. Meaning: "the height of excellence," Origin: A bee's "corbiculae", or pollen-baskets, are located on its tibiae, the mid-segments of its legs or knees. The phrase "the bee's knees," meaning became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s.
Source: http://www.sandiegobeesknees.com/the_bees_knees.htm There are a couple of other idea on what this means and I can't find who might have said it first. So have you heard another meaning for this saying? Let me know!
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
August 13, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
PLEASED AS PUNCH My grandmother used to say this a lot. As a boy I never really got it, sure drinking red punch made me happy and so did hitting my brother. Well here is the real origins and meanings! Meaning: Very Satisfied
Origin: As pleased as Punch' derives from the Mr. Punch puppet character. Punch's name itself derives from Polichinello (spelled various ways, including Punchinello), a puppet used in the 16th century Italian Commedia dell'arte.
Punch and Judy shows, the popular summer-time entertainments on British beaches, have been somewhat in decline from the latter half of the 20th century onward, due to them being seen as politically incorrect. That's hardly surprising as the main character Punch is a wife-beating serial killer.
In performance, the grotesque Punch character is depicted as self-satisfied and delighted with his evil deeds and squawking "That's the way to do it!" whenever he dispatches another victim. Nevertheless, there is still what might be called a folk affection for the old rogue in the UK and it would be a shame to see the tradition fade away completely.
The show had an Italian origin and has been much changed over the years. It began in Britain at the time of the restoration of the monarchy in the 17th century.
The phrase 'as pleased as Punch' appears fairly late in the story. The earliest known record is from William Gifford's satires The Baviad, and Maeviad, 1797: Oh! how my fingers itch to pull thy nose! As pleased as Punch, I'd hold it in my gripe.
'As pleased as Punch' is now the most common form of the expression. When the term was coined it was just as usual to say 'as proud as Punch'. Charles Dickens, for example used the two terms interchangeably in his novels. For example:
David Copperfield, 1850: I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honor of being connected with your family.
Hard Times, 1854: When Sissy got into the school here..her father was as pleased as Punch.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
July 30, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
GO OFF WITHOUT A HITCH
Meaning: to happen successfully without any problems
Origin: One of the definitions of hitch actually means a temporary difficulty. This phase is known as an idiom. The earliest publication I could find of it is from Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2832, 23 August 1866. This saying gains widespread popularity from this point on.
I was surprised to find that there are no references to beast of burden running off with parts of their hitches still attached to them or to flint lock rifles mis-firing.
It is usually used to refer to weddings that go smoothly.
Sources: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Cambridge University Press
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
July 23, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick DON'T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS BEFORE THEY ARE HATCHED Meaning: Don't be hasty in evaluating one's assets. Origin: Many of the proverbial words of advice that have lasted the test of time begin with 'don't'. 'Don't count your chickens' is one of the oldest, and possibly the wisest, of these. The thought was recorded in print by Thomas Howell in New Sonnets and pretty Pamphlets, 1570:
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/count-your-chickens.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
July 16, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick DOG DAYS Meaning: The hottest, most sultry days of summer.. Origins: This saying has nothing to do with dogs. The expression originated in Roman times as 'canicularius dies,' 'days of the dog,' and was an astronomical expression referring to the dog star Sirius, or possibly Procyon. The Romans linked the rising of the Dog Star, the most brilliant star in the constellation, 'Canis Major,' with the sultry summer heat, believing that the star added to the extreme heat of the sun. 'Canicular days,' of course, have nothing to do with heat from the Dog Star, but the ancient expression remains popular after more than 20 centuries." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997, http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/10/messages/722.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
July 9, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick GREEDY AS A PIG I was flipping through the channels last night when this clip from the movie Snatch caught my eye.
It had me thinking was it true, I know other movies and shows that featured pigs being fed flesh. I know from my own experience working on hog farms they can devour each other rather quickly. But is this really where the saying came from?
Meaning: Pigs will eat all put in front of them
Origin: As near as I can tell this saying did not originate with how much flesh a pig can eat. It is known as a false proverb, which means, not being a complete sentence and seldom express any general wisdom (Yoruba Proverbs, Oyekan Owomoyela). It has however been with us as long as we have been keeping pigs and refers more generally to the fact that pigs are someone or something that monopolizes time and resources.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
July 2, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
THE CORN IS AS HIGH AS AN ELEPHANTS EYE Meaning: The corn is really tall Origin: Originally from lyrics in Rogers and Hammerstein’s song Oh What a Beautiful Morning, from the musical Oklahoma. So where did “knee high by fourth of July or the addition “by the fourth of July” come from? From what I can find, back in the days of 40 bushel corn, knee high by the fourth of July was the goal, now you are doing something wrong if it not starting to tassel by July in the southern corn belt. The addition of “buy the 4th of July” to “High as an Elephants Eye” likely has more to do with it rhyming well than an actual reason. http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/ohwhata.htm Happy Independence Day!
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
June 24, 2010 Written By1: Craig DIck
Origin: Apprentices used to be expected to hold the candle so that more experienced workmen were able to see what they were doing. Someone unable even to do that would be of low status indeed. Sir Edward Dering used a similar phrase 'to hold the candle' in his The fower cardinal-vertues of a Carmelite fryar, 1641: "Though I be not worthy to hold the candle to Aristotle." 'To hold a candle' is first recorded in 1883 in William Norris's No New Thing: Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/183700.html Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
June 18, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
GO HAY WIRE Meaning: To go wrong, to become overly excited or deranged. Origin: Hay-wire is the light wire that was used in baling machines to tie up bales of hay. At the turn of the 20th century the expression 'a haywire outfit' began to be used in the USA. This was used to describe companies that patched-up faulty machinery using such wire, rather than making proper long-term fixes. In 1905, The US Forestry Bureau Bulletin described a 'Hay wire outfit' as 'a contemptuous term for loggers with poor logging equipment'. By 1920, the use of haywire to mean 'awry' or 'out of control' was recorded in Dialect Notes, Volume 82. This may be a reference back to 'hay-wire outfits' but is more likely to be a literal allusion to scrambled hay-wire - anyone who has handled coils of wire will be familiar with its determination to gather into an irretrievable tangle.
To go haywire was recorded in the late 1920s. For example, in this piece about a basketball game from The Helena Independent, January 1928: "...their anxiety to score let their passing game go haywire with many wild heaves finding marks in the bleachers."
Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/go-haywire.html
June 11, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
RIGHT AS RAIN All the rain this past week and hearing Reinke Irrigation’s slogan (More right than ran) had me thinking. How can 5 inches of rain in less than hour right be right?
Meaning: perfect, well, absolutely right
Origin: There have been expressions starting right as ... since medieval times, always in the sense of something being satisfactory, safe, secure or comfortable.
1546 - Right as a line
1400 - Right as an adamant, where an adamant was a lodestone or magnet.
1622 - Right as a gun
17th Century - Right as my leg
1837 - Right as a trivet and about the same time, or a little later, people were saying that things were as right as ninepence, as right as a book, as right as nails, or as right as the bank.
Right as Rain first appears in 1894, though there is no mention of origin, though likely was first spoken by an Englishman. The first documented use of the saying is in Max Beerbohm’s book Yet Again of 1909.
Right as Rain makes no more sense than the variants it has usurped and is clearly just a play on words though perhaps there’s a lurking idea that rain often comes straight down, in a right line, to use the old sense.
Sources: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rig1.htm http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/3/messages/599.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
June 4, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
HIGH ON THE HOG Meaning: Affluent and luxurious. Origin: The source of this phrase is often said to be the fact that the best cuts of meat on a pig come from the back and upper leg and that the wealthy ate cuts from 'high on the hog', while the paupers ate belly pork and trotters. The imagery of lords and ladies feasting on fine meats at Olde Englyshe banquets is easy to bring to mind and this seems to be the right context for the phrase to have been coined in. However, as far as the source of this expression goes, our imagination needs to leap forward a few centuries. None of the variants of the phrase 'living (or eating) high on (or off) the hog' is to be found in any of the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare or the like. In fact, they aren't found in print in any form until the 20th century, and then in the USA rather than England. The idea that 'living high on the hog' initially meant 'living the high life' and eating pork, rather than literally 'eating meat from high on the pig', seems plausible but is dealt a blow by the following citation. This is the earliest printed form of the phrase that I have come across - from the New York Times, March 1920: Southern laborers who are "eating too high up on the hog" (pork chops and ham) and American housewives who "eat too far back on the beef" (porterhouse and round steak) are to blame for the continued high cost of living, the American Institute of Meat Packers announced today. 'High off the hog' has a similar pedigree, i.e. mid 20th century USA. For example, the San Francisco paper the Call-Bulletin, May 1946: I have to do my shopping in the black market because we can't eat as high off the hog as Roosevelt and Ickes and Joe Davis and all those millionaire friends of the common man. Why, when people had eaten pork for millennia, did the phrase not originate before the 20th century, is a difficult question to answer. Nevertheless, 'high on the hog' appears to have been derived, in the USA, as a reference to the cuts of meat on pigs. The question of why the clunky idiom 'eating too far back on the beef' didn't quite catch on with the public is a little easier to resolve.
Source:http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/high-on-the-hog.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
May 28, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
BOUGHT THE FARM A salute to our fallen Veterans on Memorial Day Weekend
Meaning: To die, particularly in an accident or military action.
Origin: Many think this saying comes from the idea that death benefits paid to one's family, especially from the armed forces, were at one time enough to pay off the mortgage to the home, or farm, for the family the deceased left behind. Or, possibly a cynical reference to a common sentiment held by draftees, expressing the desire to settle down and buy a farm when the war is over.
While the origin of this phrase is uncertain. It is 20th century and all the early references to it relate to the US military. The New York Times Magazine, March 1954, had a related phrase, in a glossary of jet pilots' slang:
"Bought a plot, had a fatal crash."
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “buy” as to suffer some mishap; to get killed; to die;
The earliest use of “buy” in this sense dates to 1825, more than a century before the earliest appearance of “buy the farm”.
In this sense “the farm” is a slang to reference to a burial plot (i.e. a piece of ground). “Buy a plot” appeared around the time of “buy the farm” meaning the same thing.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
May 21, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick HIT THE HAY
Meaning: Go to bed.
Origin: The term hay was used in the USA to mean bed since the early 20th century. In 1902, American author George Ade wrote in People You Know:
"After Dinner he smoked one Perfecto and then,... he crawled into the Hay at 9.30 P.M."
In 1902, mattresses were often sacks stuffed with straw or hay (hence the similar phrase 'hit the sack').
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
May 14, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick SPILL THE BEANS Meaning: To divulge a secret, especially to do so inadvertently or maliciously.
Origin: The derivation of this expression is sometimes said to be a voting system used in ancient Greece. The story goes that white beans indicated positive votes and black beans negative. Votes had to be unanimous, so if the collector 'spilled the beans' before the vote was complete and a black bean was seen, the vote was halted.
That's plausible, but doesn't account for the fact that the phrase is first found in the early 20th century. It's probably best if we concentrate our search there and ignore ancient Greece.
'Spill' has been used as a verb with the meaning of 'divulge' or 'let out' since at least the 16th century
That 'let out' meaning was probably influenced by an earlier meaning of 'spill', i.e. 'kill' and the subsequent usage 'spill blood', which was in common use by the 14th century.
The earliest uses of 'spill the beans' come from the USA. The meaning of the phrase was then something like 'spoil the beans' or 'upset the applecart', which harks back to the supposed Greek knocking over of a bean container. The first example I can find is from The Stevens Point Journal, June 1908.
We have 'spill', meaning 'divulge', but why beans? Well, it could have been almost anything. In fact, there are several 'spill the' variants - 'spill the soup', 'spill your guts', or simply, just 'spill'.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
May 7, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Meaning: An indication that a piece of information was obtained via an informal contact, i.e. word of mouth.
Origin: The first practical public demonstration of the telegraph was given in 1844, when Samuel Morse sent a message from Washington to Baltimore. The invention was widely welcomed as a means of rapidly communicating news. It soon became clear though that close communities already had effective word-of-mouth communications. This distinguished the new direct 'down-the-wire' telegraph from the “grapevine” method, which was likened to the coiling tendrils of a vine. It's clear that the allusion was to interactions amongst people who could be expected to be found amongst grapevines, i.e. the rural poor.
In 1876, The Reno Evening Gazette ran an article about a bumper corn and grape crop. They commented on the fact that the people who were then called Indians and Negroes seemed to be already aware of it (hardly a surprise you might think as it would have been they who had harvested the crops):
Of course 'heard it through the grapevine' is best known to us as the Motown song, recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1967 and by Marvin Gaye in 1968. It's salutary that, whilst the telegraph is long gone, the person-to-person communication that preceded it is still going strong.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/heard-it-through-the-grapevine.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
April 30, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
SOW YOUR WILD OATS Meaning: 'to conduct oneself foolishly' It usually refers to a young man frittering his time away in fruitless dissipation, or to the prolific sexual activities of a young man. Origin: The wild oat (Avena fatua) is a common tall plant that looks like its relative the cereal plant oat, but is really a pernicious weed that infests the fields and is difficult to eradicate. Farmers have since ancient times hated it because it’s a weed that’s useless as a cereal crop, but its seeds have always been difficult to separate from those of useful cereals and so tended to survive and multiply from year to year. The only way to remove it was to tramp the fields and hand-weed it. Even today it’s still a problem, despite modern seed cleaning and selective weedkillers. The uselessness of wild oats has been known since ancient times and for almost as long we have had the expression to 'sow wild oats, The expression has been traced back to the Roman comic Plautus in 194 B.C. and was probably used before him. The saying is first recorded in English in 1542, in a tract by the Norfolk Protestant clergyman Thomas Becon. In the 16th and 17th century dissolute or wild young men were called 'wild oats." From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, of 1869: “Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles”.
Sources: From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997) World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion,
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
April 23, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY SHOWERS Meaning: Something good may happen as a result of unpleasant events. Many of life’s greatest things come only to those who wait, and by patiently and happily enduring the clouds and damp of April you can find yourself more easily able to take in the sights and smells of May.
Origin: The proverb has been traced back to about 1557 in a Poem by Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, April Husbandry.
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
April 16, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick YOU CAN’T SQUEEZE BLOOD FROM A TURNIP Meaning: You cannot get something from a person, especially money, that they don't have. You can only get what people are willing or able to give. A turnip cannot be coaxed, squeezed, or cajoled into producing blood. All efforts at obtaining blood from this vegetable will be futile Origin: Unknown, but thought to originate in the Bible, with the story about Cain and Abel in Genesis 4? "Abel kept flocks (a shepherd/rancher), and Cain worked the soil (a farmer). In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock (a meat offering requiring bloodshed). The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor." (NIV) In the Old Testament God required a blood offering for sin. Hence, you can't get blood out of a turnip Another reference says "blood from a turnip" was used by Frederick Marryat, "apparently borrowing an expression from folklore," in "Japhet in Search of a Father" in 1836: There's no getting blood out of a turnip."
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ . April 9, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick GRIND TO A HALT This spring product has gone out faster than previous years. Now that fertilizer stocks are depleted, many dealers have found themselves, grinding to a halt. Meaning: Probably just a colloquial phrase that refers to something slowing down and stopping, usually because of a problem Origin: Thought to be an expression used in milling, though use of this saying in print did not show up until Dec. 1934 inThe Nevada State Journal, long after the milling industries hay day. Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
April 1, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick BY HOOK OR BY CROOK With the planting season upon us I thought this saying fitting since every year we get the crop in one way or another! Meaning: By whatever means necessary - be they fair or foul. Origin: The earliest citation of the phrase that is in Philip Stubbes' The Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, Either by hooke or crooke, by night or day. It is sometimes suggested that 'by hook or by crook' derives from the custom in mediaeval England of allowing peasants to take from royal forests whatever deadwood they could pull down with a shepherd's crook or cut with a reaper's billhook. Crooks are the curved or hooked sticks that shepherds use to catch sheep by hooking their hind legs. Hook is a synonym for crook. It is quite possible that the two words were put together to mean 'one way or another', for no better reason than the rhyming. Either that, or the 'wood gathering' derivation is correct. We may never know which. Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/by-hook-or-by-crook.html Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
March 26, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick BEAT THE TAR OUT OF YOU This was something I heard from my grandmother a lot as a small boy, especially after I disappeared for hours on my bike or on a long hike without letting her know I was going to be gone! Meaning: As mostly attributed, to defeat someone very badly. As I believe my grandmother meant it, beating them sufficiently to return them to the path of rightousness. Orgin: It started as an old sea phrase, to "squeeze all the tar out of the ropes" or sails as to hold on tightly, for life. It has been attributed to Herman Melville around 1850. “I will wallop the tar out of you” appeared around 1888. As for 'beating the tar out of' --- consider the tar in 'tarpaulin', a canvas cloth that has been stiffened and tightened by soaking in and absorbing tar. Next consider a beating so bad that it takes the 'stiffening' out of a fellow. There you have a sufficient explanation of the phrase. What's more, sticky substances --- blod, snot, sweat, salt, and grime --- may fly from the recipient of such a beating. So the analogy, though now just a dull cliche, was in the first place a vivid, true, and brutal picture. I did find one religious reference, though I have not been able to substaiate this. "Tar" in this sense is a diminutive of "tarnation," which is a condensation of "eternal damnation," so when you beat the tar out of someone, you are essentially beating them sufficiently to return them to the path of rightousness. source:http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/56/messages/734.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
March 19, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
IT'S RAINING CATS AND DOGS This is a reader request, Thanks for submission Gudrun, a Calcium Products pocket knife is on its way to you. This idiom however did not orginate on the farm... Meaning: Raining very heavily Origin: The expression first appeared in print in a modified form in 1653. Richard Brome's comedy 'The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches', referred to stormy weather with the line: "It shall raine.....dogs and polecats". The origin seems to stem from the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England. Heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colorful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood; The first appearance of the currently used version (Its Raining Cats and Dogs) is in Jonathan Swift’s 'A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation' writen in 1738: “… though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".
The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and now used 'rain cats and dogs' is good evidence that poor sanitation was the source of the phrase as we now use and that Swift my be quoting an expression he himself had created.
Sources: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/raining%20cats%20and%20dogs.html and http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rai1.htm
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
March 12, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
DIRT POOR
Meaning: Lacking most of the necessities of life, Having, or being able to provide, very few of the basic needs of life; very poor
Origin: This phrase first appears in print from Edna Ferber's 1931 novel, American Beauty. Thousands of Great Plains farmers during the Dust Bowl Era lost everything except the dirt of their unworkable farms, now worthless. Also, huge dust storms created an unusual amount of dirtiness by blowing sand into every corner of their farmhouses.
Some people say it dates back to England in the 1500's where finished floors were rare, but this origin has not been proven. However dirt as a synonym for soil is an American invention. The English generally use the word to mean filth—either real or metaphorical. Dirt farmer, dirt road, hit pay dirt, eat dirt, and do someone dirt were all coined in the United States.
Source: http://www.vintage-vocabulary.com/dirtpoor.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
March 5, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick HELL-BENT FOR LEATHER The expression fuses “hell-bent” with another expression, “hell-for-leather.”
Meaning: To be “bent on something” is to be determined to do a specific thing. One of the meanings is “to go in a certain direction.” Literally, then, to be “hell-bent” would mean “going in the direction of hell.” The way we use it though, to be “hell-bent on something” means to achieve something at all costs or with reckless intent".
The expression hell-for-leather means at “breakneck speed, very fast” and usually used with reference to riding on horseback. The fused expression hell-bent for leather is apparently an American coinage that fuses hell-bent with hell-for-leather and means “recklessly fast.”
Origin:
The term "hell-bent," which dates from the early 1700s, The earliest quotations in the dictionary were references to American Indians "Hell bent on Thoughts of Massacree" (1731).
The Story of the Gadsby, By Rudyard Kipling, (1891): "Here, Gaddy, take the note to Bingle and ride hell-for-leather.".
The first citation of "hell-bent for leather" is from a 1926 article in the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star: "Bold, reckless dare devils driving hell bent for leather."
Sources: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/hell-bent-and-hell-for-leather/ and http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008_12_01_grammarphobiacom_archive.html
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.
Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
February 26, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick DON’T MUZZLE THE OX WHILE HE’S FEEDING I originally thought this saying was “Don’t muscle the ox while he is feeding”. I found out I was wrong, I also found out this is not a farm saying but a biblical saying and was orgnially “YOU SHALL NOT MUZZLE THE OX WHILE HE IS THRESHING ” Meaning: In ancient times an animal was used to spin a wheel or walk a threshing floor to separate the wheat from the stalk/chaff. Those who were first to harness animal power to thresh wheat quickly discovered that their “power source” was eating the grain they were harvesting. Animal owners quickly began to muzzle the ox/donkey to keep it from eating the grain. In the old testament Law God commanded Israel to permit the animal doing the labor to share in the benefits of his hard work. It is designed to teach us that those working hard to produce, ought rightly to share in the benefits of their production. Origin: The Bible, Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians: “For it is written in the Law of Moses, “YOU SHALL NOT MUZZLE THE OX WHILE HE IS THRESHING ” From: http://dollarsanddoctrine.com/2010/01/04/what-does-muzzle-the-ox-mean/
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
February 19, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick MESS WITH THE BULL YOU GET THE HORNS Meaning: If you do something stupid or dangerous, you can get hurt. Origin: While not an actual farm saying (Aphorisms), “The horns” is an idiom made famous in the 1985 John Hughes movie “The Breakfast Club. The line comes from the late Paul Gleason who plays the principal. This one was suggested to me by one of our blog readers. My college roomate used to say this all the time and I have seen “The Breakfast Club” a couple of times, I hadn’t realized that this was a realtively new expression.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .  Calcium Products Craig Dick Farm Sayings Friday Mess with the bull you get the horns meaning origin history February 12, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick Follow Your Nose No Toucan Sam didn't orginally say it, but he did help to make it a house hold saying. Meaning: To make decisions by thinking of how you feel about someone or something instead of finding out information about them, to go straight ahead, the direction that one's nose is pointing, to move in the direction of something you smell. Origin: First seen in print 1774 in “FOUR YEARS ON THE FIRING LINE", By Col. James Cooper Nisbet. The saying "Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while", gets it roots from follow your nose.
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
February 5, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick HOLD YOUR HORSES Meaning: Take it easy; keep calm; don't do anything rash
Attributed To: September 1844, The New Orleans Picayune (newspaper) It was originally written as 'hold your hosses' and it appears in print that way many times from 1844 onwards. It isn't until much later, in Chatelaine, in 1939, we get the more familiar phrase, "Hold your horses, dear." In 1943 there's a more descriptive use, in Hunt and Pringle's Service Slang, "Hold your horses, hold the job until further orders. (comes from the Artillery). Source: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/610608 Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
January 29, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick Or Agriculture Aphorisms. EVEN A BLIND PIG FINDS AND ACRON ONCE IN A WHILE I heard this saying by a speaker at a conference a few weeks back, but under closer inspection, I found out that is should be, A blind squirrel finds an acorn, a blind pig finds a truffle, once in a while. Meaning: Most people think that it means that no matter how much of an underdog someone is, and no matter how unlikely it is that they succeed, they will find success. The problem with that is, a pig doesn't search for truffles by vision, but by smell, so a blind pig should be as successful finding truffles as a sighted one and needn't rely on luck. Squirells incidentally also use their noses to find acrons and other nuts. Both pigs and dogs are used to find truffles, and I would assume a pig eats aorns (also found by smell), but I haven’t been able to find a reference for people using pigs to find acrons. This means that talking about blind pigs finding acrons means someone has mixed up two aphorisms. So really the saying means follow your nose. We’ll dissect that saying another time! Attributed to: Lyndon Johnson 1908-1973 Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
January 22, 2010 Written By1: Craig Dick
From: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/41/messages/299.html MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES -- Meaning : Act while conditions are favorable. The grass that is going to be used as hay needs to be dried after it is cut: rain is likely to spoil it. The farmer, therefore, sought to cut hay on a day when it seemed likely that the sun would be around for that day and one or two more. Atributed to: John Heywood listed the advice as proverbial in 1546: 'When the sunne shyneth make hey.'" From "Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Wings Books, Originally New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985).
Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog. Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .
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