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I would like to know where 'in a pigs eye' comes from too Jackie. Plus it would get the thread back to the original subject which was quite interesting. I restarted from nightotter's mouse and then it was dragged (me actively included I admit) on a side track. I've searched but did not find more clearness than you did.

Wikipedia talk:Don't-give-a-fuckism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In a pig's eye. WP:NPA? I dunno, repeatedly posting to an editor's Talk page with no purpose but to belittle him, and refusing to cease and desist, ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Don't-give-a-fuckism - 60k -

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all you'll get is speculation, as pigsney and pig's eye are of questionable connection. but there is this: there were several 18th C. colloquial expressions (chiefly N. Amer. and Austral.), all derisive in nature: in a pig's ear, in a pig's arse, in a pig's eye.

coincidence? probly not.

#165980 02/23/07 06:28 AM
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pigsney? interesting. I can't add anything to it. tsuwm's post seems put a stopper on it. My friend and I spent a good deal of our work time thrashing about the theme of this thread, but came up nil. At first I thought posse might work. When I was a kid it was only used to describe a group of Indians. In the last couple of decades it seemed to become more popular. But the basic def. covers all.

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From what you give as information I take it that 'pigsney' and 'in a pig's eye' may have developped along different lines. And that there is no dramatic change in meaning because the two were never really related?

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Quote:

From what you give as information I take it that 'pigsney' and 'in a pig's eye' may have developped along different lines. And that there is no dramatic change in meaning because the two were never really related?




yeah, maybe.

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Quote:

Ahem. I say, ahem.




think it's all sewn up?


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Quote:

Quote:

From what you give as information I take it that 'pigsney' and 'in a pig's eye' may have developped along different lines. And that there is no dramatic change in meaning because the two were never really related?




yeah, maybe.




Yeah. When pigs fly.

#165985 02/23/07 02:50 PM
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pigsney

Maybe it's the same sort of thing as the etymology of Cockney from cock's egg. When pigs fly, they'll lay ...


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
#165986 02/23/07 03:36 PM
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When pigs fly they'll call their vieuw 'a pig's-eye' .

#165987 02/25/07 02:36 PM
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I absolutly agree. As a former prescriptivist, as I'd mentioned on other threads, eventually any word will have come to mean anything the writer wishes it to

A drive drive drive drive is the flight of a ball in a baseball game, the outcome of which results in an automobile trip by the all-time home-run champion to a venue in which culturally-acquired concern for the proliferation of a keychain semiconductor memory is sponsored through the profits of a lumber mill whose continued existencce depends upon the legalization of dredging a shallow river intended to convey logs downstream for further processing

Venue, incidentally, is another case in point


dalehileman
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