• mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    “You can’t get blood from a stone” is classic in the US. “No more juice from the squeeze” is another variant.

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        How is it not? The euphemisms all mean you “cant get X from Y.”

        Both of my examples mean exactly that.

        • ArbitraryMary@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          “You can’t make a silk purse from sows ear” means you can’t make something nice from rubbish. “You can’t get blood from a stone” means attempting something difficult, if not impossible and futile”. E.g. “trying to get my kids to tell me about their school day is like trying to get blood from a stone.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try I get nothing.

          • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            A sow is a female pig, which doesnt produce silk at all. Attempting to get silk from it would be difficult, if not impossible and futile. It wouldn’t matter how hard you try, you would get nothing.

            You can get as much silk from a sows ear as you can get blood from a stone. I dont see much differnce, but i guess the sows ear phrase requires more culture context if it means “you can’t get something nice from rubbish.”

            • putoelquelolea@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago

              One of the versions I have heard about this analogy comes from corn silk. The corn fed to pigs is usually of the lowest quality, and if you use the silk from cheap ears of corn, you won’t be able to make a useful purse out of it

    • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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      6 months ago

      The proverb you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear means you can’t create a fine product from inferior materials.

      I’d argue it’s closer to 朽木不可雕^. 巧婦難為無米之炊 (巧妇难为无米之炊) is more like you can’t make stuff without the necessary requirements.

      ^朽木不可雕: Lit. Rotten wood can’t be carved, metaphorically You can’t teach a student that is too dumb.

      … Well actually no. Upon looking into these 3 idioms further while composing this comment, I leaned more and more towards that 巧婦難為無米之炊 is actually closer. Why? Because 朽木不可雕 applies only to humans and it puts more of a focus on the rotten wood (aka the dumb student).

      I guess this comment was kind of useless lol but I decided to post it anyway because I put in way too much effort

    • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      German for “like father, like son” is “the apple doesn’t fall far off the tree trunk”. But many people nowadays use “the apple doesn’t fall far off the pear tree”, which is a variant that I think originally was supposed to suggest illegitimate fatherhood.

    • BellaDonna@mujico.org
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      5 months ago

      Isn’t that more like “you can’t ask an elm tree for pears?”

      And even more literally “don’t ask for pears to the elm?”

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Lipstick on a pig along with others already mentioned.

  • Shou@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    “Even if you give an ape a ring, it’ll remain an ugly thing.” -Netherlands.

  • Zloubida@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    If I understand the original idiom, the nearest French expression would be “you can’t make a race horse from a donkey” (“tu ne peux pas faire un cheval de course d’un âne”).