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Where can you buy a poke walker separately?

What is the origin and literal meaning of the phrase "(to) buy a pig in a poke?"

  • The colloquial meaning is to buy an over valued or deceptively represented item. What does this have to do with pigs and what exactly is a poke?

  • Answer:

    A "poke" is a sack. It's an archaic term (Shakespeare and Chaucer used it), but it's still used that way in some rural areas. A "pig in a poke" is something you might want, but you're not allowed to see it. The first written citation is "Whan the pigge is proferd to holde vp the poke." (https://archive.org/stream/proverbsandepig00heywgoog/proverbsandepig00heywgoog_djvu.txt,1562.) It refers to the practice of selling a sack, supposedly containing a pig, to be eaten, but the bag actually contains a cat or dog.

Joshua Engel at Quora Visit the source

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I could Google the answer, but instead I'll tell you what I was told by a friend (which I suspect is not true). A poke is a sack. Supposedly, someone might offer to sell a (presumably sub-standard) pig tied in a sack, if the buyer agreed to not open the sack and examine it first. Sounds fishy to me. Whatever. And my friend told me this is also somehow connected to the other phrase "to let the cat out of the bag," but I forget how that fit in. EDIT: Now I remember. Supposedly, unscrupulous sellers would put a cat into a sack and try to sell it as a pig. The ruse would be found out if the cat escaped.  This whole thing seems like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology to me.

Ernie Bornheimer

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