Re: Butterflies and sleeping dogs

Posted by ESC on May 30, 2000

In Reply to: Meanings posted by j b rodrigues on May 29, 2000

: Does anyone know the meaning of:
: "Break a butterfly on a wheel"
: "Let sleeping dogs lie"?

: I thank all for your kind help.

: Sincerely,

: J Bosco

Gee whiz. I don't know about the butterfly one. A wheel was an instrument of torture used to tear people apart. Using a wheel to tear apart a butterfly would be "overkill" since butterflies are delicate things. So I am guessing that this would mean an excessive display of force. Gruesome little phrase!!

"Let sleeping dogs lie -- To let a matter or person which at the present is at rest stay at rest, rather than to create a disturbance by bringing the matter up again or arousing the person. Chaucer wrote this in just the reverse form -- 'It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.' ('Troylus and Crisedye,' 1374) -- and it was still so recorded some two hundred years later by John Heywood ('A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes,' 1592), 'It is ill wakyng of a sleapyng dogge.' But by the time of Charles Dickens ('David Copperfield, 1850) it had been turned about into the order of today's usage." From "Heavens to Betsy!" by Charles Earle Funk (Harper & Row, New York, 1955).