“Save your breath to cool your soup” is centuries old, including variants with porridge, pottage, broth, and other things. In all those cases, it’s a wry way to tell someone to be less long-winded. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Save Your Breath to Cool Your Soup, Broth, Porridge, etc.”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Joan Barry from Hobart, Wisconsin.
Hi, Joan. Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Well, I was listening to your show last Saturday, and so many people mentioned things that my mother used to say. There was one that I didn’t hear, but she used to say, save your breath to cool your soup. If someone wasn’t listening to advice or if I felt bad about something, she would just say, oh, honey, just save your breath to cool your soup.
Yeah, that expression sort of substitutes for talking. You know, instead of talking, you’re telling somebody to do something that’s more useful than the thing that they’re gabbing about.
Exactly. They’re prattling on. And it’s got a little dig to it because you would think that you would save your breath to keep yourself alive. But we’re talking about just cooling your soup or there are lots of different versions of it, like to cool your coffee, to cool your broth, to cool your pottage or your porridge.
Yeah, yeah. But it’s a little dig there. And it’s hundreds of years, at least 400 years in English, right?
It’s very old. I’ve heard that there’s a version of it in Cervantes.
Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised. Which would be 1615, something like that? Because throughout the history of humankind, we’ve always looked for nice and mean ways to tell people to shut up, right?
Yeah, in other words, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it’s got that little dig, but it’s also sort of polite. And that was exactly my mother.
Joan, thank you so much. She sounds like a wonderful woman, and I can hear the love and affection in your voice. We really appreciate you sharing these memories with us.
Thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye.
What a perfect illustration of what we always say on the show, right? Words aren’t just transmitted from generation to generation. They’re transmitted along with love.
Yes, yes. They’re handed down, as we like to say, like linguistic heirlooms that you give to your offspring and for them to remember you by in some ways.
Yeah, and Joan has done that with her mother. 877-929-9673.
