Asklemmy

44149 readers

1643 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What is your country's "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] H4mi@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How is that even similar?

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How is it not? The euphemisms all mean you "cant get X from Y."

Both of my examples mean exactly that.

[–] ArbitraryMary@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

“You can’t make a silk purse from sows ear” means you can’t make something nice from rubbish. “You can’t get blood from a stone” means attempting something difficult, if not impossible and futile”. E.g. “trying to get my kids to tell me about their school day is like trying to get blood from a stone.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try I get nothing.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

A sow is a female pig, which doesnt produce silk at all. Attempting to get silk from it would be difficult, if not impossible and futile. It wouldn't matter how hard you try, you would get nothing.

You can get as much silk from a sows ear as you can get blood from a stone. I dont see much differnce, but i guess the sows ear phrase requires more culture context if it means "you can't get something nice from rubbish."

[–] putoelquelolea@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

One of the versions I have heard about this analogy comes from corn silk. The corn fed to pigs is usually of the lowest quality, and if you use the silk from cheap ears of corn, you won't be able to make a useful purse out of it