“Don’t Try To Teach Your Grandma To Suck Eggs”
Meaning: Don’t offer advice to someone who has more experience than yourself.
Origin: This is an old phrase and is included in John Stevens; translation of Quevedo’s Comical Works, 1707. Back then, eggs are often eaten raw and it gained popularity among grandmas, especially those without teeth - considering it easy to ‘eat’ and healthy. Raw eggs eventually became an addiction to grandmas and they needed no instruction on ‘sucking’ them because they are so used to it.
“I’ll Eat My Hat”
Meaning: Used to display confidence in a particular matter
Origin: One of the early examples of this phrase would be from Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers, 1837: “If I knew as little of life as that, I’d eat my hat and swallow the buckle whole.” While it is not entirely clear why a hat of all other inedible things is chosen for consumption but there is a possibility that the ‘hat’ is of the large and florid headgear worn by the king and his courtiers, which would have been especially difficult to eat.
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