Asklemmy

44149 readers

1020 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What is your country's "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 3 points 7 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