French Culinary Expression: HAVING A BEEF ON YOUR LANGUAGE
So encumbered is your tongue by said animal that it is paralyzed, hence the meaning of the expression: to keep an obstinate silence, to be prevented from speaking.
But how did this peaceful working animal end up there?
We can easily justify, on the basis of numerous comparisons in which the animal appears, such as "strong like an ox", "heavy like an ox", "bleeding, blowing like an ox", that it was chosen, by the speakers of a society dedicated to agriculture, as a symbol of the most powerful weight, of the absolute obstacle...
Unless we prefer to see in this phrase that appeared in the 19th century the reference to a custom that dates back to Antiquity, where a coin with the image of an ox, placed on someone's tongue, bought his silence...
Black Angus breed beef chopper ±1kg
Price
€52.79
