Help!

Posted by Masakim on August 18, 2003

In Reply to: Help! posted by Bob on August 18, 2003

: : : Hello!
: : : I need your help to know wheather this proverb is still used in English and on which occasions!
: : : Can it be considered misogynous?

: : : "Six hours' sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool"
: : : (1864 (J. H. Friswell, Gentle Life 259): "The old English proverb, so often in the mouth of George III, was 'six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool')
: : : Thanks,
: : : bye!

: : From a Marxist perspective this proverb stinks! All should have four hours and be thankful.

: : From a capital perspective this proverb is correct. Workers should not laze in bed. Only a fool lays in bed when he could make money.

: I've never heard it used. It could easily be interpreted as misogynistic, and is not likely to become popular again.

Is there not a proverb that a man requires six hours' sleep, a woman seven, a child eight and only a fool more? If this be true, thousands of great men were, and are, fools. (_Spectato_, December 19, 1908)

Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool. The precept seems to be based on the Lat*n lines: -- Sex horis dormire sat est juvenique senique, Septem vix pigro, nulli concedimius octo. -- _Collectio Salernitana_, ed. De Renzi, vol. v. p. 7. (_Notes & Queries_, 11th series, v., 1912)