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Chicken coop is still a chicken coop

Posted by ESC on April 25, 2006

In Reply to: Chicken coop is still a chicken coop posted by dos on April 25, 2006

: what is the meaning of a chicken coop is still a chicken coop even when covered with a cloth of gold?

Dressing it up isn't going to change what it is. Similar expressions:

Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Put more lipstick on the pig.

PUT SOME ROUGE ON THE CORPSE - "Gov. Ernie Fletcher's budget makers and speech writers did their best to put some rouge on the corpse. But even their best efforts couldn't disguise the harsh truth in the budget he presented Tuesday: Kentucky's fiscal future lies dead in the water in almost every major respect, and there is neither a budgetary plan nor a political prospect for reviving it." From "Flat lining Kentucky," an editorial in The Courier Journal, Louisville, Ky. January 29, 2004.

PUTTING A RACING STRIPE ON A TURD - "As far as I'm concerned, speeding up a tax cut is like putting a racing stripe on a turd - at the end of the day, it's still a turd." From "Had Enough? A Handbook for Fighting Back" by James Carville with Jeff Nussbaum (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003) Page 123.

See: the meaning and origin of the phrase "you can't make silk purse out of a sow's ear".

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