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A follow up on a recent Quote for the Day . . .
Comments. . .
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Meaning:
A reply given to someone who wishes for something because a part of their life is unfair, basically stating that life is full of good and bad things. In essence, wishes mean nothing, just wishing for something won't get you anything.
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Origin:
"Wish in one hand, shit in the other" is listed in the 1736 Dictionarium Britannicumby Nathan Bailey, who comments on the saying:
A homely proverb applicable to those who are ever wishing for what they have little reason to hope. We have a more decent proverb to express the same thing, viz. If Wishes were Horses, Beggars would ride.
Bailey appears to have drawn the example of the proverb cited in his 1736 dictionary (above) from John Ray’s, A Collection of English Proverbs: Digested Into a Convenient Method for the Speedy Finding Any One upon Occasion (1670):
Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which will be full first.
There is also an early Scottish version of the saying. From James Kelly, A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs Explained and Made Intelligible to the English Reader (1721):
Wish in one Hand and drite in another, and see which will be first full.
‘Drite’ is an archaic Scottish word meaning to defecate.
A Burlesque Translation of Homer (1772) by Thomas Bridges and Francis Grose contains a reference. This is from a speech by Helen of Troy in the Iliad book 6, in which she insults her husband Paris for failing to fight the Greeks, and laments the fact that she has spent her life with him:
I wish they'd in a horse-pond duck'd me,
To cool my courage, ere they tuck'd me
Up in the bed where Paris ______ __!
I wish, before this cursed strife,
By the small-pox I'd lost my life,
Or that my nose was full of pimples
As that old canting rogue D — l— *s:
I wish to God we'd both been drown'd
When first we cross'd the herring-pond !
But I may wish and make a pother,
Wish in one hand, and spit in t'other
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Similar phrases are common in other languages as well.
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Modern day:
“Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower
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Some video links:
Grumpy Old Men:
Bad Santa:
Song by Kurt Weisbecker:
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