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Re: Go to Grass and Chew HayPosted by ESC on July 29, 2006 In Reply to: Re: Go to Grass and Chew Hay posted by ESC on July 29, 2006
: : : when my mother would get upset with my dad, she would tell him to: : : I have an idea, or actually two. Go to grass means here (but not necessarily elsewhere), go out in the pasture. Chew hay is what horses and cows do in their stalls. What she presumably means is "Get out of my hair. Go do your thing, leave me to do mine. Find somewhere else to be." But this is not, as far as I know, a well-known saying, and since I don't know your mother I could be very wrong. : I love this site. I had an idea that "go to grass" means "put out to pasture." As in when a horse is too old to race or work. A google led me back here to Phrase Finder. Of course. Here is a bunch of information about the origins and the complete verse. http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/10/messages/459.html That link doesn't seem to be working, so I am pasting in: Eric Partridge, "A Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British," has an entry for this: : : : "'go to grass!' is, said Hotten in 1859, 'a common answer to a troublesome or inquisitive person': obsolete by . . . 1900 in UK, it lingered in US until c. 1920, and in Aus. so late as the 1940s. Said to have been orig. US. Perhaps from putting an old horse out to grass." : : : But in current use it MIGHT mean to deteriorate, as a garden goes to grass (weeds) when not tended--just my opinion. : : You have just a piece of it as the full expression is "Go to grass and eat hay." It means "go away and stop bothering me." : : Go climb a tree, : Dry up and flake off (my now dead brother) Make like a tree and leave. |