ABOUT-WORDS-L Archives

Archiver > ABOUT-WORDS > 2007-08 > 1186244574


From:
Subject: Re: [ABOUT-WORDS] sour apples
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:22:54 EDT




"For Pete's sake. The windshield wipers don't work for sour apples."

Not quite. I would say both I suppose.

Maybe it is from Pioneer days. A housewife tries to make a pie out of sour
apples--she has to add a lot of sugar. The sour apples did not work well.

(besides sugar was hard to come by in the pioneer days.)
FRED

In a message dated 8/4/2007 8:13:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
writes:

At 15:56 04/08/2007, wrote:

>Sour grapes and sour apples are totally different.
>
>Sour grapes sort of means that someone bested you and you are "ticked off."
>Folks say you are a "sore loser" or it is just "sour grapes."
>
>Sour apples means that something does not work worth a damn.
>
>FRED
>

Fred,

Sorry if I have led everyone up a garden path.

However, "sour grapes" is not quite how you describe.

>From Aesop's Fable (not Tales as I said before),
the origin of the phrase, the fox said "well, I
did not want the grapes, any way!"

I think what has happened, is that the phrase has
been debased to reflect how you describe it.

It really means the attitude of some one who
tries to get something, fails, and then suggests
they really did not want it in the first place.

It has been misused for cases where some one is a
"bad loser" in a game or sport and then makes a
negative comment about it or just sulks and does
not congratulate the winner or winners,.

"for sour apples" must be a very American phrase
as it seems not to be known in the British
Commonwealth except perhaps having "escaped" into Canada?

Does it have the same nuance as "for Pete's sake"
- i.e. as an expression of utter frustration that an event has occurred?

Thanks

Phil







Phil Warn ô¿ô
Genealogists do it backwards
Family Historians take all steps
"The Warn family in Tetbury from 1722"
<http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philwarn/FamHist1/index.htm>;



-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and
the body of the message






************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour


This thread: