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Thread: origin of phrase

  1. #1
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    origin of phrase

    hi guys!
    i need your help...
    i want to know the origin of the phrase ''do not burn the candle at both ends''..
    it's really really important...

  2. #2
    now then ;)
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    see here
    There once was a scotsman named Drew
    Who put too much wine in his stew
    He felt a bit drunk
    And fell off his bunk
    And landed smack into his shoe
    ~(C) Ms Niamh Anne King

  3. #3
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    hi all!
    thanx kilted exile!
    i allready got this one.. it only mentions the time when it was first coined(18th century) & what does it mean but where??? this is what i wanna know?

  4. #4
    now then ;)
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    From the link:

    the phrase derives from an earlier French version. Randle Cotgrave recorded it in A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611:

    'Brusler la chandelle par les deux bouts'. [To burn the candle by the two ends]
    The where would be France.
    There once was a scotsman named Drew
    Who put too much wine in his stew
    He felt a bit drunk
    And fell off his bunk
    And landed smack into his shoe
    ~(C) Ms Niamh Anne King

  5. #5
    Tu le connais, lecteur... Kafka's Crow's Avatar
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    BBC online did an excellent article on the origin of metaphors today:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7252561.stm
    "The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
    -- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett

  6. #6
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    Allright!
    Thanx

  7. #7
    Inexplicably Undiscovered
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    from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
    "My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light."

    Ah, if Edna had been a child of the Computer Age, and had posted this on the web, would someone reply that she had
    used a "cliché"?

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