When nordmann suggests in the constitution thread that there ought to  be gratitude for outside interest in Brits take on their own. An opinion at market place level sometimes mentions certain ingratitude for the Brits part in bringing down invaders in outside regions in wars she did not start.

But an adage I was raised on was about never expecting gratitude then one is never disappointed..... then another comes to mind about no good deed ever goes unrewarded. Many such sayings peppered the daily chat of not only my home life but many others. I don't recall using any to my daughter  so are they no longer being passed on generally? Do they have a place in passed on wisdom?

Priscilla,

"But an adage I was raised on was about never expecting gratitude then one is never disappointed..... then another comes to mind about no good deed ever goes unrewarded. Many such sayings peppered the daily chat of not only my home life but many others. I don't recall using any to my daughter  so are they no longer being passed on generally? Do they have a place in passed on wisdom?"

I suppose we elderly of this board still use them, but I am not sure if for instance the grand-children will pick them up. As I see it from my inner cercle they pick it more up from the internet in English and perhaps some in French and Dutch...but not sure if the colourful ones that we use will persist in the long future...and I know a hundred of them...

PS; no time left as I prepared the whole evening for a thread on the French forum about Hitler and Nazism. My take will be: no Hitler without Nazism, no Nazism without the master player Hitler, who believed perhaps along the road in his own "mission": to guide the German "Volk".

Kind regards from Paul.

I was always told: "Leave something on your plate for Mr Manners" -  an exhortation which sounds really odd now. I've not heard that for over fifty years.

Isn't the expression referred to in the OP, "No good deed ever goes unpunished" - or is that a cynical, modern variation?

Temperance wrote:

Isn't the expression referred to in the OP, "No good deed ever goes unpunished" - or is that a cynical, modern variation?

Definitely the version I grew up with - and which I'd always assumed came from Wilde (definitely his style). However I found today that I was dead wrong, as this excellent bit of etymological detective work has just revealed to me (thanks, Mr Google).

Which reminds me of one of the earliest of such idioms that I can remember - a sort of "catchphrase/refrain" conducted between my mother and me as she blew out the candle after tucking me in at a very tender age indeed (I kid you not - electricity was a downstairs phenomenon in our house - even the loo didn't make it indoors until I was about twelve). The valedictory phrase as she slipped out the door was "Where was Moses when the lights went out?", to which the obligatory salutatorian refrain before slipping off into nod's kingdom was a joyfully shouted "In the dark!" I had of course naively assumed that my esteemed mater, then occupying the role of font of all knowledge and the exalted position of only slightly left of the central hub in the puerile universe revolving around myself and that I had so determinedly assumed was the full extent of reality as ever required to be acknowledged, had originated the phrase. I was therefore amazed when, a few years later, I came across its actual origin in a public library copy of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (when the Widow Douglas tries to "sivilize" Huck and queries his knowledge of Moses' whereabouts during the "bullrushes incident"). My delight at having (accidentally) tracked down an etymological source was ever so faintly tinged with the rueful realisation that our exalted domestic Minerva had slipped in the household pantheon just a notch. When gods (and goddesses) are dethroned they tend to take a fair chunk of their universe with them - all very necessary of course, but never without some sadness.

In my OP I used my mother's adage......along with remarks that whenever I made tea I would be rewarded in heavan. I assume whoever marks up the heavenly brownie point chart later scored out most of these because of my later change of tactic. With daily streams of friends and business callers I was told to 'Put kettle om,'P' '  also  involved constant washing up  cups, I devised a ploy. My tea became so awful that to this day if I say I'll make tea people will stand and say they'd rather do it, thank you. I cannot recall when I last made tea for anyone else. So no longer rewarded in heaven.

And the main reason for the change in tactic was because I came to realise that during the making of tea I was also missing all the best bits of the gossip.....the phrase 'Little pigs have big ears.' comes to mind.

Pitchers.

Yes, well. very likely.... what?

"Little pitchers have big ears". it's the funny version you meant, and the one I grew up with (and apparently Kipling too). So yes. likely, what!

I, too, knew it as "little pitchers have big ears". Long thought it was "pictures" and couldn't quite see why any picture wanted Noddy's mate.

Casting nasturtiums about my mum and what she meant whatever she said would have been an act of great courage. If she said pigs ears she meant pigs ears. Essex has jugs not pitchers - jug ears of course comes to mind. 
Not a good day, by and large all that finding out that in Yorkshire they put vinegar in and on  pease pudding. As they also say in these parts 'A little bit of that goes along way.' That was a dark cloud warning remark which meant quick exit for small fry.

Over on the Constitutions thread I mentioned a reference in Macbeth to "the poor cat i'th'adage". I've looked up the reference. Lady Macbeth is here having a go at her husband (in Act I sc vii) :

Would'st thou have that
Which thou esteem's the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would',
Like the poor cat i'th'adage?

The moggy adage was apparently taken from Heywood Three Hundred Epigrammes: "The cate would eate fyshe, but would not wet her feet". There is apparently a French version: "Le chat aime le poisson, mais il n'aime pas à mouiller la patte."

I've never heard this adage in modern use.


I've always like the Scottish adage: "Many a mickle makes a muckle", but it is rarely heard these days.

I think "Many a mickle makes a muckle" is still heard in my neck of the woods - maybe not so much with young people.  Upthread Priscilla mentioned not expecting gratitude for good works - there is "Virtue brings its own reward" in a similar vein.  When I was learning Pitman shorthand (Pitman's shorthand?) Pitman Publishing was still very much an entity and they printed a number of books to teach the shorthand system.  There was something "preachy" about some of the exhortations to work hard in the Pitman books though I can't remember any offhand.

Autocorrect changed "muckle" to buckle!

nordmann wrote:

Temperance wrote:

Isn't the expression referred to in the OP, "No good deed ever goes unpunished" - or is that a cynical, modern variation?

Definitely the version I grew up with - and which I'd always assumed came from Wilde (definitely his style). However I found today that I was dead wrong, as this excellent bit of etymological detective work has just revealed to me

Priscilla’s basic premise though is correct, that for every adage there is a converse. Sometimes (as with the Walter Map quote) this comes in the form of an ironic mutation representing an ‘inverted morality’.

I first became aware of this when as a teenager due to go off on summer holiday and thus be separated from my first girlfriend, I uttered the cliché to her that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. To this she drily replied ‘what the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve over’.

In a similar spirit to hers is a saying (but not an adage as such) which is favoured by rugger-buggers etc and says ‘what goes on tour, stays on tour’. I have to say that anyone who believes that is showing even more naivety than I did as that teenage boy. In my experience absolutely every single detail of what goes on tour manages to get back to wives and girlfriends etc. As Benjamin Franklin remarked “Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.” For some reason, however, when women are on tour themselves then they seem to make much better confederates.

Another related adage, also believed to originate in America and often attributed to Mark Twain, is ‘If you tell the truth then you don’t have to remember anything.’ Apparently (as with the Oscar Wilde example given earlier) the Twain attribution is unsubstantiated. Does anyone know where it comes from?

The "Twain" one is the mirror image of "Liars should have good memories".

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is the differenace between an adage, saying, proverb, slogan, motto, platitude, epithet ... or indeed any other oft-repeated, memorable, even trite ... sayings?

What IS an adage .. and what is this thread about? Frankly I'm confused.

Good question Meles.

My understanding is that, while both are sayings, a proverb is figurative or poetic while an adage is more prosaic. A platitude is a proverb or adage which one perceives to be clichéd. Whether or not it is a platitude, therefore, is subjective. An epithet is merely a descriptive phrase. For example:

‘The early bird catches the worm’ – is a proverb

‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise’ - is an adage

‘First come, first served’ – may have started out as an adage but is now a procedural statement

Whether they are sayings or adages or proverbs I'm not sure but one will sometimes be cut down if one says "Great minds think alike" by another person saying "Fools seldom differ".

Thank you for asking MM.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Whether they are sayings or adages or proverbs I'm not sure but one will sometimes be cut down if one says "Great minds think alike" by another person saying "Fools seldom differ".

I like that LiR. Similarly the 'early bird' proverb has a suffix which has come into the English language over the last 20 years or so from (I think) Albanian:

'The early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.'

MM, it was supposed to be about the phrases heard at home by the oldens on site and whether or not they will be paassed on.

Today I heard the gloomy one used about doleful events....'They always come in threes.' To which another added, 'Things always get worse until they get better.' Those are adages.... probably. And of course they are also cliches - will the young generation use them in time?

Another doleful one - perhaps? "One has to go for one to come"  on a birth and a death in the family.

I'd heard something similar if not exactly the same as the saying, or adage, or hackneyed phrase or whatever mentioned by G above.  Referring to people who were not regular churchgoers going there just to be "hatched, matched and despatched" more baptism, wedding and the funeral service (perhaps dating from the days when more people did attend church than now).

"Hatch, Match and Despatch" originated in the newspaper trade, as far as I know LiR - I understood that it's the industry jargon for the "Births, Deaths and Marriages" announcement columns that were once a rather prominent feature of daily journals.

The question of when a simple proverb becomes an "adage" seems to vary according to local culture and use. In Ireland, for example, epithets and the like often had an old Irish language origin and therefore, when translated into English, often contained far more data than it's normal to include in counterparts of true English origin (detailed biographical information relating to fictional human elements of the saying, for example, which in Irish tended to be employed to add extra "oomph" but which in English only over-complicates things for most listeners). In many cases the original "adage" was therefore reduced to a more snazzy proverb size even though both versions may well have endured - so to Irish people the distinction between "adage" and "proverb" was an important one used to discern between original epithets, especially those that make a moralistic or philosophical point concerning human behaviour, and their shortened versions if both were "out in the vernacular wild".

"T'was many a man's nose was broken by his mouth", for example, is the more modern version of an epithet recorded by a 10th century Irish monk "Ní raibh srón Phádraig chomh díreach, mar toisc go raibh a bhéal ró-dhíreach go minic". This translated more or less as "Patrick's nose was not as straight as it might have been because often his mouth was too straight for his own good". An arguably wittier version of the one in current use but with way too much personal reference and original Irish language punning to make it "funny" in English.

I'm not sure Priscilla's (obviously correctly observed in her personal experience) concern that younger generations aren't persisting as before in using adages and the like that they might have picked up at home is one that also applies in Ireland in equal measure, at least not as far as I gather from talking to people there of all ages. It seems the innate Irish appreciation of "the blás" in vernacular speech is one that has at least retarded this tendency. And at least based on a recent visit to Yorkshire, I'm not sure it applies universally in England either, or at least is a tendency not progressing at at a universal rate.

The use of adage in our family usually implied empathy but expected stoic resilience .Minor upsets from laddered stockings to broken cups,  punctures and similar would meet with 'Into each life some rain must fall,'  said with a smile. I might try that out on family small fry  on sympathy gleaning trips.

Stoic resistance  was then met with 'You'd laugh if your bum was on fire.' 

There probably are many adages used by the young but in street lingo format that I would neither hear not understand if I did. Communication is interesting.

According to Wikipedia "adage" comes from the Latin "adagio".  I know Wikipedia is only as good as the people who contribute to it (though I do use it quite a lot - though I think it may be wise to cross-check with another source, maybe not an online one) but I'll leave the link anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adage

I use Wikipedia for reference I hasten to add, I've never contributed any information to it.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but a huge collection of adages was made by Erasmus. Being Erasmus, he wrote mini-essays in Latin or Greek - like you do - to expound and elaborate on many of the sayings he had gathered. The first edition of his Adagia was published in 1500 and had about eight hundred entries. Collecting adages became something of a passion for Erasmus - a comparatively harmless obsession given the times he lived in. I think he ended up with something like three thousand altogether and he kept adding to his collection right up until his death in 1536. More sense than Frederick the Wise who collected relics for a hobby.

In 1814 Robert Bland published his version of the Erasmus compilation of instructive sayings and proverbs,, adding examples from other European languages. I'm afraid the link to a rather nice old edition of Bland book, complete with turning pages, won't "take").

EDIT: However, you can now "Look Inside" Bland's Adagia of Erasmus on Amazon, or even buy the paperback edition for £11.95. It's eligible for AmazonPrime free delivery too! - how amazed Erasmus - and Bland - would be. Wonders will never cease.

PS This is from Wiki:




Commonplace examples from Adagia:

Many of the adages have become commonplace in many European languages, and we owe our use of them to Erasmus. Equivalents in English include:

More haste, less speed
The blind leading the blind
A rolling stone gathers no moss
One man's meat is another man's poison
Necessity is the mother of invention
One step at a time
To be in the same boat
To lead one by the nose
A rare bird
Even a child can see it
To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
To walk on tiptoe
One to one
Out of tune
A point in time
I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
To call a spade a spade
Hatched from the same egg
Up to both ears (Up to his eyeballs)
As though in a mirror
Think before you start
What's done cannot be undone
Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
We cannot all do everything
Many hands make light work
A living corpse
Where there's life, there's hope
To cut to the quick
Time reveals all things
Golden handcuffs
Crocodile tears
To lift a finger
You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
To walk the tightrope
Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
With a fair wind
To dangle the bait
Kill two birds with one stone
To swallow the hook
The bowels of the earth
Happy in one's own skin
Hanging by a thread
The dog is worthy of his dinner
To weigh anchor
To grind one's teeth
Nowhere near the mark
To throw cold water on
Complete the circle
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
No sooner said than done
Neither with bad things nor without them (Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em)
Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
Like teaching an old man a new language (Can't teach an old dog new tricks)
A necessary evil
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip
To squeeze water out of a stone
To leave no stone unturned
Let the cobbler stick to his last (Stick to your knitting)
God helps those who help themselves
The grass is greener over the fence
The cart before the horse
Dog in the manger
One swallow doesn't make a summer
His heart was in his boots
To sleep on it
To break the ice
Ship-shape
To die of laughing
To have an iron in the fire
To look a gift horse in the mouth
Neither fish nor flesh
Like father, like son
Not worth a snap of the fingers
He blows his own trumpet
To show one's heels
A snail's pace

Found this Guardian review of The Adages of Erasmus (different edition, not the Bland version) - I had no idea that the Dutchman's collection was actually his most popular publication, probably because, as the reviewer, Nicholas Lezard, points out, the work is so "extraordinarily readable". Perhaps the garderobe/privy in every trendy 16th century household had a copy. (I must admit, pretentious or not, I now want one for my loo.)


Guardian Review of The Adages of Erasmus



And now the Adages. This is basically Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable avant la lettre. It's an enormous, all-inclusive collection of clichés, saws, sayings and proverbs, all glossed and commented on, with helpful comments and notes from the current editor. This may not sound exciting, but the Adages were Erasmus's most popular work, and it is remarkable how influential they still are. We still refer to Pandora's box because of Erasmus (it was, strictly speaking, a jar); and we call a spade a spade because he mistranslated the Latin scapha, which actually means a skiff.

But what makes Erasmus's Adages special are the digressions. These are invariably fascinating and connect us to the Renaissance mind with a shock of recognition. If there was one thing that got his goat, it was the abuse of power. Time and again he returns to the subject of how a good ruler should behave, and to his disgust for brazen pomposity, absolute might, and contempt for the people. Considering that he had plenty of examples to choose from, some of them uncomfortably close to home, this was brave and principled.

This is more than just a superb bedside book. Those who feel a little uncomfortable with American foreign policy these days will read with interest his comments on the kind of rulers who choose the eagle as their symbol. He hated the eagle, "the greedy, evil eyes, the menacing gape, the cruel eyelids, and most of all ... the hook nose ... a clearly royal likeness, splendid and full of majesty". It gets worse: "At the screech of the eagle, I declare, the common folk immediately tremble, the senate huddles together, the nobles become servile, judges become obsequious, theologians are silent, lawyers assent, laws give way, and established custom yields: nothing can stand against it, not right, not duty, not justice, not humanity."

Erasmus is also funny: he comments on early versions of the proverbs now delivered as "shit or get off the pot" and "giving one the finger", as well as "to look into a dog's anus", the modern equivalent being, I suppose, "stick your head up a dead bear's bum". I cannot think of a more congenial companion in all the centuries of recorded thought. But his depiction of the menace of the eagle makes this a book you would do well to look at.



I know I'm going on a bit about Erasmus, but I've really got into this adage thing. You can read some more of his here. I like the ones about crabs and monkeys - and the  comment about the Greeks "making an effort" is good, too!


Some More Adages From Erasmus's Huge Collection



A monkey is a monkey, even if it's wearing gold medals. (1.7.11)

You're trying to milk a billy-goat. (1.3.51)

By making an effort, the Greeks reached Troy. (2.2.37)

There's no way you'll be able to make crabs walk straight. (3.7.38)

Excuse me Temperance, for lowering the tone in this thread, but on this day - today - when the discussions in the British Cabinet May be somewhat troublesome - once again - I feel obliged to mention the Latin saying starting with, 'Non contra ventum ...', alas, I've forgotten the rest of the quote but when - many many moons ago - I mentioned the meaning to a farm-bred cousin, he mumbled something on the lines that he didn't think it wise to p. on an electric fence either.
According to what meagre news I've had access to today, perhaps a feeling of having done both wouldn't be quite amiss.

Again, Temperance, my excuses, while I grab for my coat.

Crab walk

http://fantasticjokes.net/humble-crab/