Dyed in the wool

Posted by ESC on February 16, 2001

In Reply to: Dyed in the wool posted by R. Berg on February 16, 2001

: : Can some genius tell me what the hell dyed in the wool means and what is the origin of this phrase.This is what I told an unsuspecting colleague and was praised for my erudition.I said that in cold mountainous regions sheep were dyed so that they could be spotted in the mass of white snow!And wht does the phrase mean? can some one tell me?

: Spotted sheep, eh? Afraid not. Literally, "dyed in the wool" refers to fabric and means that the fibers were dyed before the fabric was woven from them. The color lasts longer that way than when fabric is dyed after manufacture. Figuratively, the phrase has been extended to mean thorough, all-out, resistant to change: "He's a dyed-in-the-wool atheist."

: Now you have some GENUINE erudition to exhibit to your colleagues.

Search the archives under "dyed" for more discussion.

Dyed in the wool -- if wool is dyed before it's made up into yarn, or while it was still raw wool, the color would be more firmly fixed. "The figurative sense -- have one's habits or traits so deeply ingrained as to be inflexible -- seems not to have been used in England before the late sixteenth century, for a writer of that period thought he had to explain his meaning when he used it. This was odd, for England was largely dependent upon her textile industry then and earlier..." From A Hog on Ice by Charles Earle Funk (Harper & Row, 1948.