For some fun--look up origin of phrase 'tell someone how the cow ate the cabbage'

[bobbieinok]

Had never heard it before.

Found it in a Dorothy Garlock novel.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. The joke is better than the saying.

[LiberalArkie]

2. Naturally Arkansas had to be in there smewhere

THAT'S HOW THE COW ATE THE CABBAGE - "An expression to indicate the speaker is laying it on the line, telling it like it is, getting down to brass tacks - with the connotation of telling someone what he or she needs to know but probably doesn't want to hear. According to Little Rock attorney Alston Jennings, who submitted this southernism to Richard Allen's February 2, 1991, 'Our Town' column in the Arkansas Gazette, the expression has its roots in a story about an elephant that escaped from the zoo and wandered into a woman's cabbage patch. The woman observed the elephant pulling up her cabbages with its trunk and eating them. She called the police to report that there was a cow in her cabbage patch pulling up cabbages with its tail. When the surprised police officer inquired as to what the cow was doing with the cabbages, the woman replied, 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you!'" From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Fact on File, New York, 1997)

[CTyankee]

3. My father used to say this often. This was back in the 1950s...

[ProudLib72]

6. So that's where the term "Cabbage Ass" came from!

[Cirque du So-What]

4. That's new to me

[KY_EnviroGuy]

5. According to Wikipedia, Ann Richards loved that phrase.

Lordy, I miss her and Molly Ivins.

I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.
Molly Ivins

And thanks Bobbieinok, you helped me find a neat new site today called The Word Detective:

Link: http://www.word-detective.com/

Just learned the origin of "catercornered"......... .......

[lillypaddle]

7. I still say it

Not long ago I said it when arguing with my son,

"You just want to always tell me exactly how the cow ate the cabbage."

He and his wife just stared at me.