All of us have heard of these expressions at one point in our life or another (or perhaps on a daily basis):
“You greedy pig!”
“You’re such a lazy bum!”
But before a few days ago, I never gave these expressions a second thought. Think about it for a second. “Greedy pig?” Isn’t that a little redundant? And why do we think pigs are naturally greedy? Yeah, they eat from the trough really sloppily and quickly, but they’re just animals— my cat gobbles down his food when I feed him (probably because I intentionally starve him, but I digress). When I think of the term “greedy pig,” I picture an image of a pig with dollar signs embedded in his eyes surrounded by sacks of money. I chuckle to myself, “That’s ridiculous, pigs can’t use money— they only have hooves! How in the world would you use money without opposable thumbs?”
Apparently, this pig is half human or something so that’s not a problem for him, but that’s not the point. Also, thanks to some sick people, this playful and jovial expression took a turn for the worse:
This is some sort of greedy pig god— I’m not touching this one.
Anyways, here’s a picture of a friendly greedy pig, the one that I’ve always pictured in my mind. He’s like the obese, rich uncle that all of us never had.
But hold on, before we move to the next expression, we say “greedy pig” as opposed to what? Okay, so take the opposite and we get the “altruistic pig.” Unfortunately, the general populace has not adopted this ingenius term and thus Google Imaging only finds flying pigs instead.
Next, “lazy bum?” Bums are inherently lazy, right? That’s why they remain bums. Again, as opposed to what? The resourceful and hardworking bum? What’s with all of this redunancy in our expressions? If you just take a second to reflect on the absurdity of our expressions, I think you’ll find yourself chuckling too. These expressions have somehow wriggled their way into pop culture and no one calls them out.
Wait, hold on, some bums remain bums because they have mental illnesses that prevent them from working. Sorry, this blog post doesn’t apply to mentally-ill bums, just lazy ones.
