![]() The imagery is perfect, as you imagine the cows just ambling along slowly and taking a long time to get there. The phrase refers to the nature of cows, notoriously languid creatures who move only at their own pace. I think I’ll be waiting till the cows come home for my son to call me!! Surely your mother said this to you at one time or another in your life. Tweet Thanks and Acknowledgements This rhyme can be found in The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, and printed in the USA. ![]() The manner in which this phrase came into being through the morphing and blurring of words is the way many of our everyday phrases worked their way into our language. : 'One who blabs to a teacher or to a senior is a 'blabber-mouth', 'rotten sneak', 'dirty tell tale tit'. Tell-tale-tit Nursery Rhyme Tell-tale-tit Your tongue shall be slit, And all the dogs in the town Shall have a little bit. As time went on, tatelen became tattlin which was thought of as tattling and soon morphed from meaningless prattle to idle gossip to telling tales to tattle-tale. There’s an old nursery rhyme: “Tell-tale-tit, your tongue will be slit, and all the dogs within the town shall have a little bit”. They squeal on each other, no matter how small the problem is. Tattle-Tale, tattle-tale!!! And I thought this might have something to do with a rattle snake’s tail…and no clue as to why?Īctually the origin of this name-calling phrase has its roots in a combination of a Middle English word derived from Old Dutch, tatelen, which meant meaningless prattle or stammering and was used in reference to children and an old English expression tell-tale, which was used the way we use tattle-tale. What’s a tattletale, you ask Well, it’s someone who tells or 'tattles' on others constantly.
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