Egg-laying woolly milk sow
Eggs Wollmilchsau (including egg-laying wool (lactic) pig ) is a colloquial phrase , with something (one thing, person or problem solving) is circumscribed, the "only advantages, will satisfy all needs, meets all requirements." The saying illustrates this ideal using an imaginary farm animal that, as a hybrid being, combines the advantages of different animal species, namely chicken (laying eggs), sheep (supplying wool), cow (giving milk) and pork (meat).
history
The breeder's fantasy of a “woolly pig laying eggs”, a “pig that wears merino wool / and also lays eggs” is documented in a humorous poem as early as 1959. In the form of (egg-laying) woolly pig or woolly milk pig , the coincidence has appeared as a saying since the late 1960s.
Web links
Commons : Eierlegende Wollmilchsau - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dudenredaktion (ed.): Duden - Redewendung. Dictionary of German Idioms . 3. revised and updated edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim [a. a.] 2008, p. 882.
- ↑ Printed in: Ludwig Renn on his 70th birthday . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1959, p. 135 (“The battle for the woolly pig laying eggs”).
- ↑ Heinz Küpper: Illustrated Lexicon of German Slang in 8 volumes , Volume 8. Klett, Stuttgart 1984, p. 3117.
- ↑ With the Latin at the end . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1969 ( online - "We are breeding ... the egg-laying woolly milk pig", as a statement by a physics professor about the problems of a degree that trained students "to be hermaphrodites who are neither scientists nor optimally trained practitioners").