What is the meaning and origin of " You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.
Hi, Ace -- That looks like a pretty bad pun in English! 🙂
The usual expression is "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." The joke is that the word "led" is the past tense of the verb "to lead," and the noun "lead" (meaning the gray stuff inside a pencil) is pronounced like "led." Does that make sense?
I don't know the origin of this, but thanks for the chuckle!
It's a line delivered by Stan Laurel in the 1930 short film "Brats." (At least, assuming the IMDb entry is accurate.)
You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.
This reminds me of another (IMNSHO funnier) snowclone:
Dorothy Parker was asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence. Her response: “You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.” (italics mine)
This reminds me of the sentence we learned studying natural language parsing:
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.