I was dismayed the other day when a BBC news presenter said she had never heard of “a pig in a poke” and asked the interviewee what he meant. But then, I would not know the phrase myself had I not heard it in an American TV cartoon when I was a child.
I remembered the cartoon but had forgotten it was called Hector Heathcote – now thanks to some Googling I have identified that a whole episode was called A Pig in a Poke. So that was indeed where I first heard the phrase.
In the Middle Ages it was common for people to sell a dog or cat for meat and pass it off as something tastier, like a pig. And a poke is a bag or sack, so if you buy a pig in a poke, you buy something concealed, without inspecting it, believing it to be a juicy pig.
That’s the literal meaning but of course it now means agreeing to anything without checking it out first. It’s similar to the saying “to buy a pup” – again referring to dog meat.
It’s interesting that, according to Wikipedia, many languages refer to it as “buying a cat in a sack”, such as Welsh, prynu cath mewn cwd. So this version refers to what you are actually buying, rather than what you think you are buying.
But let’s get back to poke and similar words. I assumed it was related to pocket and pouch. My Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1972) says it’s Middle English and the affinities are unknown, but some online sources say it’s from Old North French poque (12th century), probably from an older Germanic language (you find Old English pocca, Middle Dutch poke, Old Norse poki). And it may come from the ancient Indo-European root beu-, an imitative word associated with the idea of “to swell”.
Personally I always thought poke came from the French word poche. Poche is French for a pocket or pouch and pochette is a small pouch, attached to clothing – what we would call in English a pocket.
I also thought that “poke salad” meant leaves you picked and put in your pocket. I know the term from Polk Salad Annie by Tony Joe White, a hit record in the 1960s. Here’s the video.
The spelling seems to be interchangeable between poke and polk and it is a member of the “pokeweed” family. The Latin name is Phytolacca americana and you can read more here.
Although many say poke referred to the sack you put the leaves in when collecting the salad, the excellent website Eat The Weeds says the word poke comes from the Virginia Algonquian (Indian) word pakon or pucone first recorded in 1708.
So there you have it. I wonder if Polk Salad Annie wore a poke bonnet? Again, I thought the name for the bonnet came from it being a bit “baggy”. Here’s how to make your own!
I have also seen it explained by your being able to poke all your hair inside the bonnet. Or I wonder if it’s because it “pokes out” in front? The whole point of it was that it kept the sun off your face but it sometimes went to extremes, as satirised in this cartoon from France, where the hats were called invisibles because you couldn’t see the woman’s face easily…
“Pokes out”? Yes, that’s another meaning of poke, meaning to thrust something forward at or into a different something. I suspect it has its roots in a very old word, as the very saying of the word “poke” makes you thrust forward your mouth in a way suggestive of the meaning, like the Indo-European beu- root mentioned above. My dictionary again says it comes from Middle English word poken but has older Germanic roots.
You can “poke your nose” into someone else’s business and you can meanly “poke fun” at a poor unfortunate.
The word puck used for the hard rubber disc used instead of a ball in ice-hockey comes from the same roots via Irish poc or Scottish Gaelic puc, meaning to poke or push the ball forward in games like hurling.
Poke leads to poker – the pointed iron rod you use to prod the fire. Humans must have been poking fires since prehistoric times! Stiff-backed people can also be “poker-straight”.
Red-hot poker is also the common name for the plant Kniphofia, named after someone called Kniphof – also see my blog post Who would you name a plant after?
Then there is the card game of poker – thought to originate in the American Deep South before 1830. The name may come from Pochspiel, a card game similar to poker. This comes from the German pochen, literally to knock but also to brag about what you have in your hand, as a bluff (some older versions of the game are called brag in English). Alternatively it may come from a French game called poque.
We also use the slang poker face to mean “deadpan”, as when you are bluffing you don’t want to “give the game away”.
According to my dictionary, a poker can also be a bugbear or shape-shifting goblin, although it’s not the usual spelling. According to Wikipedia it’s púca in Irish, pwca in Welsh, bucca in Cornwall and pouque in the Channel Islands.Other spellings include pooka, phouka, phooca or púka.
In English we have pook or puck – as in Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The name may come from a Scandinavian word for “nature spirit”.
The pooka (the spelling I prefer) can be either benevolent or malevolent, beautiful or terrifying, and can assume many forms, often a horse, rabbit, goat, goblin, or dog. Its fur is usually dark. The pooka’s commonest form is as a sleek black horse with a flowing mane and luminous golden eyes.
So much we read as a child stays with us, and I remember one of those educational girls’ annuals giving a guide to the Romany language, with said that a signpost was pookering kosh, which literally means “speaking stick”. Pooker means to ask or say in Romany but at this stage I have no idea if that connects to anything else in this post!
Is there more? Oh yes, polka, a central European dance probably coming from the Czech word polka, meaning a Polish woman. Although there are other theories relating to the Czech word pulka, meaning half, and the fact that there are short half-steps in the dance.
And then there are polka dots. Disappointingly they probably have no meaning other than that the name was chosen at a time when the dance was fashionable. And I had this theory that they were named after those diagrams you have to show you where to put your feet when learning a dance.
This image isn’t quite what I meant, but these polka dots show you where to put your hands and feet in the game of Twister…
And finally a pig in a poke bonnet…
Fun post. I enjoyed reading it 🙂
Thanks so much 🙂
Fascinating and hilarious. I especially enjoyed the French poke bonnets and whatever was going on inside them. Also the photograph of polk salad, a plant I have never seen. I learned the expression “pig in a poke” from my mother.
Thanks Mrs Daffodil! To be honest, that French cartoon looks to me as if the men are being eaten alive by aliens… I wonder if you remember the actual occasion when your mother taught you “pig in a poke”, and how she explained it. There must be so many things we learn without remembering exactly how and when.
Best wishes 🙂
Sad to say, I don’t remember when and how.
Absolutely brilliant. Thank you for entertaining me on an early Sunday evening Pat.
Steady on now, Shaz! But I’m glad you liked it – I just followed a train of thought.
Best wishes 🙂
I love this sort of thing … ummm, not that you can tell LOL
I’d heard the phrase before, but thought it meant being in a tight spot or tricky situation. Thanks for telling us its history!
Well there you go. I’m glad the content was new to at least one person!
Best wishes and bee happy 🙂
Nice etymological piece. Pat.
When I took the 11-plus exam, in 1962 when I was 10 (!), you had to know all sorts of English proverbs, mottoes and sayings like ‘buying a pig in a poke’. Somewhere, I’ve still got my primer (text-book), with many of them in.
The idea of a pig in a poke as you say was that if you didn’t check you might get another wriggly, squealing creature instead of the piglet you were expecting – a cat being the most likely substitute, as reflected in the other languages as you mention.
This led to the saying ‘to let the cat out of the bag’, because then the secret was revealed.
May I suggest a follow-up on the word ‘sack’, it occurs to me that it has multiple meanings, not all obviously related.
Ah dammit, I missed one! You’re right, let the cat out of the bag… of course.
As for sack, I’m not sure there’s enough in it for a rambling post from me, but I guess you are thinking of the meanings of a coarse bag; to fire from a job (I wonder where that use came from? Did you give the fired person a sack to put their belongings in, as you now give an office worker a black bag to clear their desk?); or to pillage; or a Spanish wine favoured by Falstaff; and then there’s the sack tree (upas)…
And I see there’s sackbut, too, coming from two old French words meaning to pull and push…
Oh dear I seem to have “stolen my own thunder” or “shot my fox” (not really, wildlife lovers!)
Speak again soon 🙂
You covered the meanings of sack that passed through my mind, apart from ‘to hit the sack’. “The firing from a job” origin is discussed at “http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/151100.html”
Another interesting read Pat…Michelle
Thank you 🙂
Just found a picture of ‘a poke in a pig’ at http://www.flickr.com/photos/7839903@N02/4433393716/ Though in no way obscene, this is not recommended for sensitive animal-lovers
Mmmm… a strange one, that! Please tell me it was plastic!
It recalls for me the day when some naughty lads at our school put a pig’s head with spectacles on atop one of the shed-like classrooms to protest at the headmaster’s strictness…
Les Pouques are the “hidden people” or little people of the Channel Islands. They are thought to be capable of shape shifting and are said to communicate readily with birds, animals and some children. Otherwise inexplicable or awkward events are attributed to Les Pouques. They are also believed to have a keen sense of justice and to reward humans who show consideration for others. Tradition holds that the “pouques share” of good fortune should be set aside secure in the belief that it will be wisely used.
Nice one!
Yes, I can see where that fits in with the whole “Puck” idea…
Best wishes and thank you for the information 🙂
Sean, are you suggesting the phrase could be a pig in a pouque ? Actually, in French, un cochon dans une puque might just work, see the first meaning of pouque at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pouque. But this use of Puque/puck is discussed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAca and appears unrelated to the Poche – pocket – bag – sack line of etymology.
Thanks as always for your interesting input.
All the best 🙂