Pot calling the kettle black
I need to know the origin of "pot calling the kettle black " and the meaning of it.Someone used the term and an other person said it was a racist remark. I don't think so but I need something from the...
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From The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:late 17th century; of a person who accuses or blames another while being guilty of the same offence.No racism there, except for the very determined.
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The phrase shows up in a British slang dictionary from before 1700. Given that Britain was rather homogeneous racially at that time, it's very unlikely that it had anything to do with race.(pipped by...
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...and Eliza.Ozzie's showed up at the bottom of my "reply" window, even though it had't been there when I hit reply. Eliza's was there by the time my reply was posted.
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Oddly enough, the same expression exists in Dutch;'De pot verwijt de ketel dat hij zwart ziet' (lit. 'the pot blames the kettle for being black').It also exists in French: 'Le chaudron mchure la pole'...
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Cast iron pot. Copper kettle. Ha! I stand corrected.Edited:Open fires, huh?. I'll sit down now.
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a1700 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew s.v., The Pot calls the kettle black AI,OK we've solved the "a" before the date issue. Now what's s.v. and AI ?
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From the OED2 abbreviation file:"s.v. sub voce, under the word'" which I take to mean "in the entry for this phrase", given in lieu of a page or chapter number.In my browser, the final word in the...
View ArticleRe: Pot calling the kettle black
s.v. is "sub voce", under the word. Used in lieu of a page number in references to dictionaries.The "AI" is a typo. The actual cite in the Big Dic reads "The Pot calls the kettle black A--" I have no...
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And in Bartleby, under "pride":www.bartleby.com/81/13624.html"blackface"? This could not mean minstrel makeup could it? Too old, right?
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Since the word appears in Brewer's (late 1890s) explication of Shakespeare's line, not in the Shakespeare quote itself--no, it's not too old to refer to minstrel shows.Gotta read these things with...
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Sounds to me as though the original cant phrase was the pot calling the kettle black-arse and the ADH quote of "black-face" is just a euphemism. Probably the body part reference was dropped, leaving...
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Nice little site on 18th century slang confirms that black-arse is slang for kettle.
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Thanks, lizzie -- that is indeed a nice site, especially for those of us who don't have Partridge's Old Slang reference work. The definition in particular reminds me of an old joke:Man and a wife are...
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Can't recall where, but I remember reading that black in the proverb was a softening of the original black-arsed, in line with Doc T's cite above. It makes sense, as the bottoms of both kettle and pot...
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I notice in the Partridge cites that the Irish, the Scots, the French and the Dutch get some flak, but not the Welsh.
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>Sounds to me as though the original cant phrase was the pot calling the kettle black-arse and the ADH quote of "black-face" is just a euphemism.As if we hadn't had enough problems with mysterious...
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Oops! I meant AHD, but even that's incorrect, as the Bartleby site quoted Brewers, not American Heritage Dict. Forty lashes with a wet noodle for my carelessness.edited for a typo
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I know this one from personal experience:Attention Deficit Hiccup.
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