Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
Hi all ...
We all hear it all the time ... I say it to my kids ... "You can keep asking 'til the cows come home, but you're not getting any ice cream!"
"Until the cows come home," to my understanding, means some distant point in the indefinite, far-off future.
But, growing up in Wisconsin, even though I'm not a farmer, I know that the cows come home pretty much every day at about 5 in the afternoon.
So, where does this phrase originate, and how does one explain that seeming inconsistency?
Thank you!
Rob
LOL, Rob! Good point about the bovines returning before sunset. It's always more difficult, etymologically, to trace phrases rather than individual words, but I suppose I've always assumed that the reference here is to, as they say so often in bizspeak, "at the end of the day" -- i.e., more metaphorical than anything else.
What do you think about that?
"Till the cows come home" reminds me of the Indian Indian (that is, Subcontinental or East Indian) expression cow-dust hour or cow-dust time. It means "dusk, twilight, or the end of the working day."
So it means "until the end of the day," you think? My sense always was that it was far more indefinite into some distant point in the future; as in, it'll never happen. When pigs fly kind of thing. But I suppose it does make sense that the phrase might begin as "until the end of the day" and expand and become exaggerated in its sense. Thanks!
I think it means “indefinitely,” and not “the end of the day.” The Briticism “the end of the day” means “when all is said and done.”
So, then, back to the original question ... why use an event that happens every day (the cows coming home) as a metaphor for some hypothetical event in the indefinite future?
Could it be that both the end of the day and an indefinite time are correct?
Perhaps it was first used by people who owned cows and used it to mean the end of the day. Then the expression was picked up by non-cow owners who liked the expression. Over time the expressions meaning was exaggerated to mean indefinitely, especially since these new people using the expression didn't own cows - therefore the cows will never come home.
For me, the "end of the day" use is generally a bit of hyperbole. I cracked my friends up once when I said, "I could eat potato casserole until the cows come home." Even if you take it to mean the end of the day, eating casserole non-stop til the end of the day is an exaggeration.
I guess my point is that I can see the phrase being used as hyperbole even if it means a finite time. I wouldn't have said "I could eat casserole until hell freezes over" -- which is a truly indefinite time in the future.
Likewise for the original example -- the kids can ask until the end of the day... but they're not getting ice cream. I doubt that the Rob would say, "You can keep asking 'til pigs fly (hell freezes over, etc), but you're not getting any ice cream!”
Does that make any sense? Or am I just rambling?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)