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Don't try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Don't try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs'?
Don't offer advice to someone who has more experience than oneself.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Don't try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs'?
These days this proverbial saying has little impact as few people have any direct experience of sucking eggs - grandmothers included. It is quite an old phrase and is included in John Stevens' translation of Quevedo's Comical Works, 1707:
"You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs."
The notion of advising the young not to offer advice to those who are older and more experienced wasn't new even then. Nicholas Udall, the author of Ralph Roister Doister the first regular English comic play, and the headmaster of Eton, translated Apophthegmes of Erasmus in 1542. That includes:
"A swyne to teach Minerua, was a prouerbe... for which we sai in Englyshe to teach our dame to spinne."
The idea was carried forward to the 20th century with this quotation, attributed by The Reader's Digest to Mark Twain (although not proven to be authentic):
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
See other 'Don't...' proverbs:
Don't cast your pearls before swine
Don't change horses in midstream
Don't count your chickens before they are hatched
Don't cut off your nose to spite your face
Don't keep a dog and bark yourself
Don't let the cat out of the bag
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Don't put the cart before the horse
Don't shut the stable door after the horse has bolted
Don't throw good money after bad
