Stupid Friday: it's Puddin n' Tain!

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Where did the saying originate: "Puddin-tain ask 

me again I'll tell you the same"?

I tried Google but could not find much. I am using this as my myspace name so if you Google it you will find me.

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 Best Answer:  Nursery rhymes often have multipurposes. They most often were political system ridicule written in symbolic dialogue to disguise the actual message. They could also be used as cute rhymes to teach children to talk.

I do not know the actual "official" version of where this rhyme originated. I can only tell you that it sounds like it ridicules the "crown" for not knowing their name. There were a couple of kings of England that could not speak Anglish because they spoke German (House of Hanover 1700s) so the locals were probably making fun of how the "crown" pronounced their name.... For example: Humpty Dumpty was supposed to be about the King's government that couldn't be put "back together again". So, to me, it makes sense that if the king can't speak "the queen's english" then if you ask his name, he says it in a "foreign tongue" and will be ridiculed for it. I might have read this, but I am not sure why I think this rhyme is written in ridicule of an English king that cannot speak english.

 · 9 years ago

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  It is a play on the name of an Irish high chief who was known as the Tain with his specific name in front of it. The Puddin" Tain was someone of not royal status but someone who had pretentious and was deridded with the name high King of the Puddings. later it became a Children s rhyme of Scots-Irish origin.

  · 10 months ago

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  the etymology of PUDDIN’ TAME (aka: pudden tame)
  
  Ithe evolution of the phrase: it refers to a way for a thief to silence or kill a house dog during a burglary. Feeds the dog a ‘pudding” laced with poison or sedative.
  
  In Cassell’s Dictionary it said: [19th cent.+] meat, usually liver, that has been impregnated with drugs or poison, used by a thief to silence a house dog (cf. verb PUDDEN).
  
  The critical point here is, I believe, that the pudding, drugged the dog and made it TAME and easy to handle and also slow and dull. It is now pretty clear to me that the ‘pudding’ or ‘puddin’ in the 19th century had the implication of dull, slow, clumsy, and also stupid. Mark Twain’s THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD’NHEAD WILSON was written in 1893 and by that time ‘pudding’ clearly connoted these things. It’s a great story which I just reread for the first time in umpteen years and after Twain's story became the children's rhyme.

   · 9 years ago

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  I'm not sure you really want to use that as your myspace name. The nonsense word "Puddin'-tain" has been variously explained as slang for female genitalia (as a derivation of Latin "pudendum") or for a sex worker (as a derivation from French "putain").
  
  Don't shoot the messenger.....
  
  EDIT: Oh, I see someone did shoot the messenger with a thumbs down.... Oh well,....

  Source(s):http://www.takeourword.com/pt.html
  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.ph...

   · 9 years ago

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  It sounds like a nursery rhyme to me or one of those insane answers some people give you just to annoy you. I'm sure it has a name somewhere.

  Source(s):ETSU: BA, English

   · 9 years ago

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  my father is who came up with that lol he is so old school
  I think it was from an old Bill Cosby puddin pop commercial