… of the Week (#15):

This week – Phrase of the Week (#2):

So I thought it would be nice, for a change, to look at the origin of another well known, if somewhat socially inurned, phrase.

Pig’s Ear

To make a pig’s ear of something is to make such a mess of a project that the result is considered useless. The phrase dates back to the Middle Ages when, if a craftsman – or more often the apprentice – was to make something so badly that it could not be used, it was called a pig’s ear. During this period in British history, it was considered that the only part of a pig which was completely inedible and unusable in any way was the ear.

… of the Week (#7):

This week – Phrase of the Week (#1):

This week, instead of just the one, I am giving you a whole bunch of words of the week. I’ve even strung them together to form a real phrase. Just to shake things up a little.

Bad (or Good) Egg

19th Century. To describe someone as a good or bad egg is to suggest that they are decent, reliable or dependable (or not as the case may be). The expression bad egg came first and was used in 1855 in Samuel A Hammett’s novel Captain Priest. The analogy used in the book draws on the fact that an egg can appear on the outside to be fresh, and yet when the shell is broken it may turn out to be rotten inside.

At the beginning of the 20th century, some students began reversing the phrase and describing decent people as good eggs.

I am a fan of this pair of phrases, and I have tried over the years to incorporate them into my vocabulary – I seem to remember my friends at school remarking on it when we were younger… I hope that you can find a chance to use one (or both) of them this week.