• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk

Swifty

Swifty

doesn't negotiate with terriers
Joined
Sep 15, 2013
Messages
33,674
I'm wondering about the source of the origin of this phrase. I've always understood it to mean to not panic about relatively small problems

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/don't_cry_over_spilled_milk

I had a waitress who doesn't speak English very well spill a large jug of milk by accident so was joking with her about the phrase, I can't find the origin of the phrase yet though ..
 
Heres a report on what the OED has to say ...

In its first incarnation, in the mid-1600s, the phrase was about “shed” milk. Back then, one of the meanings of the participial adjective “shed” was spilled. (The verb “shed” meant, among other things, to let a liquid pour out by accident.)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase “it’s no use crying over spilt milk” and its many variations as meaning “it is futile to regret what cannot be altered or undone.”

The dictionary’s first published citation comes from a collection of English proverbs by James Howell (1659): “No weeping for shed milk.”

The fact that Howell was recording a proverb rather than inventing something new indicates that the saying had been around long before 1659. Here are some later citations, and their dates, from the OED. ....
Click to expand...

More / continued at ...

SOURCE: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/09/crying-over-spilled-milk.html
 
I recall that the spilling of the milk is a key moment in the operatic version of Hansel & Gretel. It is the reason their (inadequately-milky?) mum sends them into the woods to pick berries for their supper, instead.

There, they meet the most grotesque parody of motherhood in the form of a witch who has dozens of thwarted children in her oven or parodic womb. :oops:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top