Thinking Of Teaching My Grandmother To Suck Eggs

[Anonymous]

Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs

So I've been wondering why people say that. Best I've found after a Google trawl is this:

http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-tea1.htm

Anyone know anything more about this expression? Assuming that it basically comes from literature, as suggested, I wonder when it entered common use.

The image of MY grandmother sucking eggs! League of Gentlemen - ish. Actually she's much too p-o-s-h to suck eggs herself - she'd have someone do it for her (probably a slightly odd but very reliable man who would arrive by bicycle at 50p an hour).

By the way - whilst searching I also came across this Ren And Stimpy FAQ. http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/ren_stimpy/FAQ.html

happy happy joy joy

 

[_schnor]

No sir, I don't like it.



I found 2 of my thought lost R&S tapes last week. I shouldn't have watched them in one sitting :spinning

I even got the log song from audiogalaxy I was humming it that much!

 

[Pete Younger]

When I was a kid you used to see a lot of old ladies who had lost all their teeth, for some reason they always seemed to be sucking on something and as I had heard the expression, I assumed they were sucking eggs.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Brewer, unhelpful as ever when you really need him, gives no
source but cites a related French saying:

"Les oisons veulent mener les ois paítre".

The goslings want to drive the geese to pasture.


[Ah! R & S. My favourites. I wish I'd captured them on tape as
they seem to have disappeared off the air. ]

 

[Anonymous]

Available on video tape from Amazon UK

 

[chris_in_LA]

Wasn't that in 'The Hobbit'? Wasn't Gollum doing that or something? Woah- I can't remember, it was twenty years ago when I read that...I'm probably wrong.

 

[ElKrafto]

there was a bit in the Hobbit where Gollum remembers something about teaching his mother or grandmother (can't remember exactly which one) to suck eggs, and it helps him solve Bilbo's riddle.

I only remember this because my father was fond of telling people (often me) to go suck an egg.