Re: DYED in the wool Posted by ESC on September 08, 1999
In Reply to: DYED in the wool posted by
Charleston on September 07, 1999
: I'm just 'dying' to find out what this phrase means, and where
it came from. Thanks, and sorry for the pitiful pun.
This from "Hog on Ice" by Charles Earle Funk (Harper & Row, 1948):
Dyed in the wool -- if wool is dyed before it's made up into yarn,
or while it was still raw wool, the color would be more firmly fixed.
"The figurative sense -- have one's habits or traits so deeply ingrained
as to be inflexible -- seems not to have been used in England before
the late sixteenth century, for a writer of that period thought
he had to explain his meaning when he used it. This was odd, for
England was largely dependent upon her textile industry then and
earlier..."
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