Talk:have a bun in the oven
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Etymology proposed by IP 2010[edit]
Etymology proposed by 94.192.82.129 (talk):
- The only ever recorded case of a human giving birth to an animal was in 1369, Mary Bunniwell of Hampshire was unable to conceive with her husband Eric F Lopsy and being a superstitious lady she rubbed a rabbits foot on her vagina. Miraculously one month later she was diagnosed as pregnant. This was before the invention of ultrasound and doctors, so she got the local priest to use sound ( a primitive version of ultrasound). The priest listened and heard that the right leg was abnormally furry. in January 1370 the same priest was delivering the baby. As it was winter mary insisted on giving birth in her kitchen in front of her oven. There are two conflicting stories of what ensued, Mary claims that the priest saw the rabbit leg on the baby, damned it for being a devil child and threw it in the oven. The priest claims that the baby was distraught after realising that it had a rabbits leg and became suicidal, breaking free of its mothers arms it threw itself into the oven. Either way, this gave birth to the phrase, "bun in the oven".
The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:30, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Euphemistic, vulgar[edit]
- @-sche: Is it really euphemistic, or is it rather somewhat vulgar, or what is the appropriate labelling? I more imagine it’s vulgar, because I found it really distasteful when I heard someone in the tram some years ago telling his buddy about the former’s missus having einen Braten in der Röhre, and it wasn’t only owing to the loudness of the conversation that I kept the incidence in memory, and far I am from having a disposition against meat enjoyment, rather the connection of a helpless child to something one has put into the oven is questionable – even if one does not put Holocaust jokes into the calculation. One may consider the age of this phrase, too: On first search I see it appears in the US around 1950 – apparently an inacceptable phrasing in the polite society before. German Wiktionary calls the German salopp (some of the German usage labels also may qualify for your list of untranslatable terms); the slight difference between the food item is of course a detail. Fay Freak (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
- Hmm... I would not have considered it vulgar, and Merriam-Webster calls it simply "informal", and Chambers "humorous colloq". Cambridge calls it "old-fashioned humorous" (though "old-fashioned" is a questionable label for a word that was becoming much more common until ~7 years ago and since then has only slightly fallen off according to Ngrams). TheIdioms and Grammarist make the testable claim that the use of "oven" for "womb" goes back to the 1600s, although this longer expression seems to date to the 1950s, as you say. I would have said it was euphemistic, it fulfils the "less blunt" criterion (of "less offensive, blunt or vulgar than the word or phrase which it replaces"), and google:bun in the oven euphemism finds other sites referring to it as a euphemism, but I also see some calling it annoying or (in a Time aticle) demeaning, and I can find at least two books referring to it as vulgar (though one seems like it may be using the "having to do with common people / speech" sense rather than the "obscene" sense). We could drop "euphemism" and leave just "informal". Whether to add "sometimes vulgar" I'm not sure; perhaps we should get more input in the Tea Room? - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche: Why less offensive, blunt, or vulgar? Are “womb”, which “oven” replaces, and “to have a pregnant wife” or “expecting a baby”, which the whole phrase replaces, any of it anyhow? I think I can make no understanding out of the label “euphemistic” here. The likelihood is that this is more offensive and vulgar, although perhaps saying literally that the wife is pregnant is saying it “more bluntly”– at the same time it is not “wanting the forms of civility”, as Wiktionary defines blunt, but the one who uses such questionable idioms more likely is; which raises the question whether it is a good idea to use this word blunt in the definition of euphemism; of course it’s not the case either that people who talk offensively or vulgarly are “slow or deficient in feeling: insensitive” but they feel correctly and hurt consciously; so no sense of blunt applies here. Fay Freak (talk) 19:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
- Maybe some people think it's a cute little metaphor, and use it when they speak to children? I myself find it somewhat distasteful, but people's mileage may vary. PUC – 20:06, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche: Why less offensive, blunt, or vulgar? Are “womb”, which “oven” replaces, and “to have a pregnant wife” or “expecting a baby”, which the whole phrase replaces, any of it anyhow? I think I can make no understanding out of the label “euphemistic” here. The likelihood is that this is more offensive and vulgar, although perhaps saying literally that the wife is pregnant is saying it “more bluntly”– at the same time it is not “wanting the forms of civility”, as Wiktionary defines blunt, but the one who uses such questionable idioms more likely is; which raises the question whether it is a good idea to use this word blunt in the definition of euphemism; of course it’s not the case either that people who talk offensively or vulgarly are “slow or deficient in feeling: insensitive” but they feel correctly and hurt consciously; so no sense of blunt applies here. Fay Freak (talk) 19:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
- Hmm... I would not have considered it vulgar, and Merriam-Webster calls it simply "informal", and Chambers "humorous colloq". Cambridge calls it "old-fashioned humorous" (though "old-fashioned" is a questionable label for a word that was becoming much more common until ~7 years ago and since then has only slightly fallen off according to Ngrams). TheIdioms and Grammarist make the testable claim that the use of "oven" for "womb" goes back to the 1600s, although this longer expression seems to date to the 1950s, as you say. I would have said it was euphemistic, it fulfils the "less blunt" criterion (of "less offensive, blunt or vulgar than the word or phrase which it replaces"), and google:bun in the oven euphemism finds other sites referring to it as a euphemism, but I also see some calling it annoying or (in a Time aticle) demeaning, and I can find at least two books referring to it as vulgar (though one seems like it may be using the "having to do with common people / speech" sense rather than the "obscene" sense). We could drop "euphemism" and leave just "informal". Whether to add "sometimes vulgar" I'm not sure; perhaps we should get more input in the Tea Room? - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
- Regarding how to define "euphemism", and the other points : looking at various words we (and at least some other sources) have as euphemisms, like number two and night soil, or draw one's last breath and shuffle off this mortal coil, or late ("deceased") — "faeces" and "die" and "dead" are, like "womb" and "pregnant", not vulgar words (they're literally clinical), nor offensive except insofar as they offend the taboo against bluntly mentioning those concepts in certain circumstances; they're just blunt ("abrupt in address; plain; unceremonious", I would add "direct" to the definition to the extent it's not covered by "abrupt in address") or direct (if "euphemism" should use that word in its definition instead), so number two et al are (AFAIK) considered euphemistic due to being less blunt / direct. I would have taken "have a bun in the oven" to be a cutesy (or, as Chambers and Cambridge put it, humorous) euphemism, suitable for using even with kids, but it's evident some people find it demeaning and/or vulgar...! Enough to merit a label along the lines of "sometimes considered vulgar", although I still think some qualifier like "sometimes" is needed since sometimes it's just cutesy (several other dictionaries which do label some things as vulgar do not). I see no problem with dropping the "euphemism" label here; other dictionaries don't seem to use it on this phrase (although they do label e.g. heck and ethnic cleansing); probably we need to look over exactly how we define and use both "euphemism" and "dysphemism" with an eye (as mentioned in the recent discussion of whiteness) toward making sure they have a coherent purpose that isn't already handled by other labels (or by the obvious fact that a given phrase does not literally or directly mean what it's defined as). - -sche (discuss) 10:05, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
- FWIW, someone I know announced she was pregnant today by posting "look out, there's a bun in the oven" together with a picture of herself pointing to a bun in her kitchen oven, and then a picture of an ultrasound. She, at least, found it a cutesy figure of speech. Searching twitter I see other people saying it about themselves too. What can I say, language can be weird... some comedian used to joke about how bizarre it is that "go beat yourself to the point of unconsciousness" is a positive thing to say ("can I eat these leftovers?" "sure, knock yourself out!"). - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
- "knock yourself out" does not mean that; it is a jocular invitation to spend all your energy on the project, to have you fill and then some, to go all-out until you have expended all your forces to the point of exhaustion. Obviously just eating the leftovers is not going to deplete all their strength, but that is the humorous dimension of the idiom, as if to say, even if you went to such absurd lengths, that would be fine by me. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:FD1E:9836:B161:8898 09:15, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- FWIW, someone I know announced she was pregnant today by posting "look out, there's a bun in the oven" together with a picture of herself pointing to a bun in her kitchen oven, and then a picture of an ultrasound. She, at least, found it a cutesy figure of speech. Searching twitter I see other people saying it about themselves too. What can I say, language can be weird... some comedian used to joke about how bizarre it is that "go beat yourself to the point of unconsciousness" is a positive thing to say ("can I eat these leftovers?" "sure, knock yourself out!"). - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
- There is an element of gossip and disparagement, even mockery, which gives the idiom its tinge of vulgarity. The British Tabloid press will refer to Markle as having a bun in the oven, but certainly not the Queen. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:FD1E:9836:B161:8898 09:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)