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Bought the farm

Posted by ESC on July 07, 2009 at 23:39

In Reply to: Bought the farm posted by Cheryl on July 07, 2009 at 12:11:

: I was looking up the origins of the phrase "bought the farm" I wondered if the phrase came from Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - Where the main characters talk all the way through of buying a farm literally - although metaphorically the farm is possible heaven. With one of the main character dying at the end of the novel whilst being told about the farm in great descriptive detail - I wondered if this is where the phrase could have derived. Does anyone else agree that this could be a possibility?

Not a bad theory. I looked through a couple of military slang books that I acquired after the last discussion. Nothing in them about the farm. So all I have goes back to the original idea that this was a WW II phrase: In the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins there is a long passage on "bought the farm." Paraphrasing here, one idea was that when a soldier was killed in action, it was said he "bought the farm." That is, the soldier was at peace, on a heavenly version of the farm he had often daydreamed about buying when he got back home. The other suggested origin was along the same lines. But the phrase "Well, he's bought his farm," was a wry comment on the dead soldier not getting a chance to realize his dream.

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