Re: Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs

Posted by ESC on January 04, 2003

In Reply to: Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs posted by rob sparrow on January 04, 2003

: can somebody tell me the origin of this phrase beyond "proverbial".

: thanks

From the archives under "grandma."

DON'T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS - I don't think anyone knows exactly how this phrase got started. On a farm, an egg-sucking dog (a dog that steals eggs and eats them) is bad. And I think that during one discussion of the phrase, it was said that maybe grandma didn't have teeth so she sucked soft boiled eggs. Anyway, here's what Charles Earle Funk says in "Hog on Ice" (Harper & Row, New York, 1948). "To teach one's grandmother to suck eggs - To offer needless assistance; to waste one's efforts upon futile matters; especially, to offer advice to an expert. This particular expression is well over two hundred years old; it is just a variation of an older theme that was absurd enough to appeal to the popular fancy. One of the earliest of these is given in Udall's translation of 'Apophthegmes (1542) from the works of Erasmus. It reads: 'A swyne to teach Minerua, was a prouerbe, for which we sai: Englyshe to teach our dame to spyne.'" That last bit was about an expression, don't try to teach a dame to spin.