What is the origin of the term 'til the cows come home? While discussing this with friends tonight, the group had two possible explanations:
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Cows return to their barn for milking at a given time late each night.
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If a cow runs away or escapes, it doesn't return, unlike horses, which will return to their stable. As such, 'til the cows come home is an indefinitely long time.
So, which is correct? If anybody can point me to a reputable source explaining the history of this phrase, I'd be interested to know.
Best Answer
Christine Ammer, The Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés, second edition (2006) has this entry for the phrase "not until the cows come home":
Robert Allen, Allen's Dictionary of English Phrases (2008), who also cites The Scornful Lady, concurs with Ammer as to the original sense of the phrase:
Early usage in England
Here is the quotation from The Scornful Lady with a bit more of the surrounding play for context:
Like Ammer and Allen, William Carew Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrase Collected from the Most Authentic Sources (1907) cites the occurrence in The Scornful Lady (albeit with a later publication date, but Hazlitt presents the proverbial phrase itself as including the word kiss:
However, Hazlitt fails to note that Beaumont and Fletcher used "till the cow come home" in another play—The Captain (circa 1609–1612)—in the context of drinking rather than kissing:
George Apperson, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (1993), which I believe is a reprint of Apperson's English Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings: A Historical Dictionary (1929) gives an instance of "till the cow come home" from Alexander Cooke, "Pope Joan: A Dialogue Between a Protestant and a Papist" (1625), reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany (1745):
and a first occurrence of the modern form "till the cows come home" from Swift, Polite Conversation, Dialogue II (1738):
Usage in the United States
In a Google Books search for the phrase, "till the cows come home," the earliest match appears in the context of an extended example of "The Yankee Dialect" in a handbook titled How to Talk (1857):
By "Yankee," the anonymous author of this handbook seems to mean "New Englander," since he addresses "The New York Dialect" in a separate section.
Other examples soon follow. From a letter dated September 23, 1858, and included in Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker: Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Boston, volume 2 (1864):
And from Gail Hamilton, "The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties," in Atlantic Monthly (March 1860):
(I have no idea what pairk means in the above quotation.)
Conclusions
The earliest form of the expression seems to have been "till the cow come home" from the late 1500s or early 1600s, with "till the cows come home" in use by 1738. The references I consulted agreed that the expression refers to cows coming back to the barn from the pasture either in the evening or in the morning, not to cows escaping the confines of a farm and not returning at all. Indeed, Eric Partridge, in his edition of Swift's Polite Conversation [combined snippets], says that the original phrase had the sense "till the cow come home for milking"":
Update (May 23, 2021): Even earlier instances of 'till the cow come home'
It now appears that Beaumont and Fletcher were not the first authors to commit "till the cow come home" to paper. A search of Early English Books Online yields two examples from before 1600 and another from 1610—the same year as The Scornful Lady.
From John Prime, An Exposition, and Observations upon Saint Paul to the Galathians togither with Incident Quæstions Debated, and Motiues Remoued (1587):
From John Eliot, Ortho-epia Gallica Eliots Fruits for the French: Enterlaced with a Double New Inuention, Which Teacheth to Speake Truely, Speedily and Volubly the French-Tongue (1593):
And from Alexander Cooke, Pope Ioane A Dialogue Betweene a Protestant and a Papist. Manifestly Prouing, That a Woman Called Ioane was Pope of Rome: Against the Surmises and Obiections Made to the Contrarie, by Robert Bellarmine and Cæsar Baronius Cardinals: Florimondus Ræmondus, N.D. and Other Popish Writers, Impudently Denying the Same (1610):
The instances cited here from 1587 and 1593 use the expression in settings where there is no reason to bring up a cow except to invoke it as part of a figurative phrase. And the instance from 1610 explicitly characterizes "til the cow come home" as a "saying."