What is the origin/meaning of "wheelbarrow full of frogs"
I've heard this phrase many times but am unsure as to exactly what it means.
Learn English – the origin/meaning of “wheelbarrow full of frogs”
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The New Oxford American has this:
rest one's case conclude one's presentation of evidence and arguments in a lawsuit.
• humorous said to show that one believes one has presented sufficient evidence for one's views.
It predates Perry Mason by a bit. My New Shorter Oxford English dates the following definition of rest from the mid-1800s:
rest v.
c. Voluntarily conclude presenting evidence in a law case. US.
But I found use of rest [one's] case as early as 1744 (check) from a British trial published in The Gentleman's Magazine Vol. XIV:
I believe this is a variant of "hello the camp", which is used as your father describes: when you're about to enter someone's encampment, as a kind of warning/greeting in lieu of knocking on the nonexistent door. (There's an elided "to" in there: the full/grammatical form would be "hello to the camp".)
I imagine "hello the fire" could be used if there isn't an encampment to speak of, just a fire with guys sitting around it.
Best Answer
A wheelbarrow is a smallish, open-topped, hand-propelled vehicle for the conveyance of bulky loads.
A frog is a small animal renowned for its jumping ability.
The frog is generally a very placid animal, but will jump to safety at the slightest provocation. If you place a bunch of frogs into a wheelbarrow in order to transfer the frogs from one place to another, then in order to arrive at your destination with any frogs left, you will have to be exceedingly careful not to bump, startle, or disturb the frogs in any way. And a wheelbarrow is not known for the smoothness of its ride, so your task is made all the more difficult by the choice of vehicle.
So the idea behind the idiom is that you have a task which is theoretically possible, but practical considerations render it either entirely unfeasible, or at the very least extremely difficult.
The idea of herding cats is very similar.
(I found one indication that the phrase is originally a "dutch metaphor", but no reliable source for that, so I'll let someone else dig into that side of things.)