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Anonymous Posted 10 years ago
Grammar
Buttered bread
I have read but can no longer find a quote about knowing what side your bread is buttered on. Where did the expression come from and what was the poem?
Top answer
” It means ‘I know where my loyalty lies. ’ Heywood attributes it to Samuel Fox: Yes yes, (quoth she), for all those wise words uttred, / know on which side my bread is buttred : But there will no butter cleave on my bread : And on my bread any butter to be spread ; Every promise that thou therein dost utter, 15 / knew on which side my bread is buttred. One of the proverbs Samuel Fox has jotted down in his commonplace book, MS.
- ” It means ‘I know where my loyalty lies.
- ’ Heywood attributes it to Samuel Fox: Yes yes, (quoth she), for all those wise words uttred, / know on which side my bread is buttred : But there will no butter cleave on my bread : And on my bread any butter to be spread ; Every promise that thou therein dost utter, 15 / knew on which side my bread is buttred.
- One of the proverbs Samuel Fox has jotted down in his commonplace book, MS.
- LANSDOWNE, 679.
- I leave it to you as an exercise to find Fox's source and read where he got it from.
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1 Answers
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According to this source: http://stclairpublications.info/?p=1213
A dialogue conteinying the number in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, by John Heywood, 1546:
“I knowe on whiche syde my breade is buttred.”
It means ‘I know where my loyalty lies. I realize wh
A dialogue conteinying the number in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, by John Heywood, 1546:
“I knowe on whiche syde my breade is buttred.”
It means ‘I know where my loyalty lies. I realize wh
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