Pigs Ear & More Tea Vicar

Posted by Sauerkraut on November 21, 2000

In Reply to: Pigs Ear & More Tea Vicar posted by ESC on November 21, 2000

: : I notice on the list of meanings that Pigs Ear is Cockney Ryhming Slang for Beer. Am I right in saying that if you make a mess of something you make a bit of a 'pigs ear' of it. I'm not sure how Beer fits in with that?

: : Does Anyone know where the expression 'more tea vicar' comes from?

: : Thanks, Carl

: Here's a guess. You'd have to look to the expression "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." If you mess up, you've made a pig's ear out of a pig's ear.

: I can't help you with "more tea, Vicar?" Sounds Monty Python to me. Or the punchline of a joke. Maybe the British phrase finders can help with this one.

The phrase about making a silk purse from a sow's ear has always meant the impossibility of producing something elegant from something base or normal. I've never seen it used to mean that making a poor product yields a poor product.

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