paint the pig
v. phr.— «For Office 2007, Microsoft has finally given up on what the company internally refers to as “painting the pig.” For the first time ever, Office has been given a thorough UI overall.» —“Microsoft Office 2007 Review Part 2: What’s New?” by Paul Thurrott Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows Jan. 28, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In Russian, an expression for something tantalizingly close but forever out of reach translates as “Your elbow is close, but you can’t bite it.” Much like the English phrase when pigs fly, it’s another colorful way of describing the...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle this week involves pig Latin, a.k.a. Ig-pay Atin-lay. One of two answers to each clue is a regular English word, and the other is its pig Latin version. For example, what regular English word and its pig Latin...