Talk:teach grandma how to suck eggs

don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs

What the...? Davilla 00:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

It's a fairly common idiom. The individual words' meanings combined do not constitute the meaning of that phrase, and there's no shorter variant; thus the entry must be given the full title. Is that what you were asking? --Wytukaze 20:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard it, so I wasn't sure what to think. I've seen idioms here, but the way this is worded it looks more like some sort of saying. It's certainly long enough that there could be variants. The insertion of "how" before "to" is an example, also omission of or substitutions for "your". In fact "grandma" is more prevalent on Google. Also, the example given suggests that it could in fact be shortened, doing without the negation. All together:

• to teach grandma to suck eggs = To tell an expert how to do things

Davilla 23:47, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, are these long idioms supposed to be on Wiktionary, or should we move them to single-word entries? Stevey7788 21:55, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

We have already accepted idioms and proverbs because they are more than the sum of the words in them. This one is well documented. The most famous writer to use it was w:Jonathan Swift. Eclecticology 07:41:42, 2005-07-29 (UTC)

Part of Speech

This is an idiomatic verb, not a proberb. ---> Tooironic 21:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Vulgar

I wanted to mark this as vulgar, but then I remembered “eggs” does not mean “balls” in English, as it does in Russian and Armenian. --Vahag (talk) 07:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Possible etymologies

Moved here from a transwiki page from 2012. Equinox ◑ 21:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The origins of the phrase are not clear. The OED and others suggests that it comes from a translation in 1707, by J. Stevens, of Francisco de Quevedo (Spanish author):

"You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs"

• Its use was recorded in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, published in 1749:

“I remember my old schoolmaster, who was a prodigious great scholar, used often to say, Polly matete cry town is my daskalon. The English of which, he told us, was, That a child may sometimes teach his grandmother to suck eggs”

• Letter from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Leigh Hunt, 8/15/1819:

“But what am I about? If my grandmother sucks eggs, was it I who taught her?”

• The phrase was used in the 1890s in a Punch magazine cartoon:

"You see, Grandmama, before you extract the contents of this bird's egg by suction, you must make an incision at one extremity, and a corresponding orifice at the other." Grandmama's response is to the effect, "Dearie me! And we used to just make a hole at each end."

• In "Hog on Ice" (Harper & Row, New York, 1948), Charles Earle Funk says:

"To teach one's grandmother to suck eggs - To offer needless assistance; to waste one's efforts upon futile matters; especially, to offer advice to an expert. This particular expression is well over two hundred years old; it is just a variation of an older theme that was absurd enough to appeal to the popular fancy.

• The phrase has been used in the movie The Big Country:

"Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs! I've been handling guns like this, flintlock and caplock, since before you were born."

• The line was also used in the sixth episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show:

"I don't think you're happy enough! That's right! I'll teach you to be happy! I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs! Now, boys and girls, let's try it again!"

• Egg sucking is the subject of this parody of a military instruction: How to Suck an Egg

"The purpose of this exercise is to follow precise unnecessary directions issued by a higher HQ. You have been directed to be in possession of a fresh empty eggshell for no apparent reason. Simple issuance of tasks being insufficient in any anal-retentive, career-oriented, hopelessly bureaucratic military staff society, the staff of the higher HQ have issued the following instructions."

• Sméagol instructed his grandmother, as related in the Riddle Contest in Chapter Five of The Hobbit:

"But suddenly Gollum remembered thieving from nests long ago, and sitting under the river bank teaching his grandmother, teaching his grandmother to suck — ‘Eggses!’ he hissed.

The use of the phrase "Suck-egg" for "a silly person" dates back to 1609, in the OED.