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Truth or Old Wives Tale


Luvparrots

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Has anyone every heard the one about how to tell if a hatchling is going to be male or female by examining an egg?

 

I've heard about it in poultry: pointy egg (males) vs. rounded egg (female). Complete wives tale with no scientific basis. And where does that term come from anyway? (Old Wives Tale).

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I, too, have heard of that. Basically, nonsense. BTW, Sterling, "Old Wives Tale" comes from when old women would sit around the water well in town, and do laundry, and talk all kinds of nonsense. Particularly to teach children why they should, or should not, do things. Or their observations on life.

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Well, I know we have a breeder or two in the member list. Perhaps they will check this out for us. Can they see into the nest enough to see if an egg is round or oblong. Very interesting.....

 

As for the old wives tale, my father came from the Philippines Islands. He was born in 1906 and came to the USA as a young soldier. He told me this "tale" when I was a child.

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I've heard about it in poultry: pointy egg (males) vs. rounded egg (female). Complete wives tale with no scientific basis. And where does that term come from anyway? (Old Wives Tale).

 

It's from Old English and Anglo Saxon language.

 

[h=2]Origins[edit]

In this context, the word wife means woman rather than married woman. This usage stems from Old English wif (woman) and is akin to the German Weib, also meaning "woman". This sense of the word is still used in Modern English in constructions such as midwife and fishwife.[/h]Old wives' tales often discourage unwanted behavior, usually in children, or for folk cures for ailments ranging from a toothache to dysentery.

The concept of old wives' tales has existed for centuries. In 1611, the King James Bible was published with the following translation of the Apostle Paul writing to his young protégé Timothy, "But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself [rather] unto godliness" (I Timothy 4:7 KJV[1]).

[h=3]The oral tradition[edit][/h]Old wives' tales originate in the oral tradition of storytelling. They were generally propagated by illiterate women, telling stories to each other or to children. The stories did not attempt to moralise, but to teach lessons and make difficult concepts like death or coming of age easy for children to understand. Also these stories are used to scare children so they don't do certain things.[2]

These tales have often been collected by literate men, and turned into written works. Fairy tales by Basile, Perrault, and the Grimms have their roots in the oral tradition of women. These male writers took the stories from women, with their plucky, clever heroines and heroes, and turned them into morality tales for children.[3]

 

Examples of old wives' tales include:

 

  • Masturbation will make you blind and have hairy palms.
  • Ice cream leads to nightmares.
  • Toes pointed up signify low blood sugar.
  • Cracking knuckles gives arthritis.[4][5]
  • High heart rates lead to female fetuses.
  • Don't swallow gum or it will stay in your stomach for seven years.
  • Don't make silly faces or it will make the silly face permanent.
  • Chocolate leads to acne.[6]
  • Shaving makes the hair grow back thicker.[7]
  • Eating crusts (of a sandwich) makes your hair go curly/you grow hair on your chest.
  • The appearance of white spots on the fingernails (Leukonychia) is due to lying/not eating enough green vegetables/calcium.
  • It's bad luck to open an umbrella indoors.
  • Nosebleeds are a sign of sexual arousal.

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Now you have me snorting with laughter. There must be an old wife's tale about that. Oh, maybe I am the old wife of that tale. As to the original question, Gilbert was a boy for his first decade by guessing methods, a female now for 20 months due to a blood drop analysis DNA.

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