Generation Gap And Uttered Sayings

Today has reminded me that there is a generation gap between me and my younger employees. Today in production meeting, I said “that someone was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” and they did not know what I was talking about.  For you a lot younger than me,  it means to be unable to turn something ugly or inferior into something attractive or of value, such; no matter how expensive his clothes, he still looks sloppy – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  This expression was already a proverb in the mid-1500s.  Not wait a minute, I am not that old!

Another one today was “salting money down”.  Salting money down is an idiom that means to save something, especially money, for use at a later time.  Salting away money for retirement is a good example.

When I was a child my mother would have an expression that I would not understand.  I would ask her where does that come from and she would say it was an “old ettered saying”.  When I became an adult and my mother had passed away I googled ettered sayings and it was her Irish or East Tennessee way of saying uttered saying.  These are sayings that have been passed down from generation to generation. I am just doing my part and passing them to the younger generation.

 

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