bring one's own hide to market
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.09 in modern English
40
Scrabble Score
24
Letters
4
Syllables
15
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To create one's own fate, as a result of one's chosen character and actions; to experience the appropriate consequences of one's behavior.
American usage
Example Sentences
- ""[T]hou art a living passenger upon this earth, and must look out for thyself. Help yourself! Nobody forwards thee to thy destination; and we Germans have a proverb that comes near it in meaning: 'Each one must carry his own hide to market.'""
- "In this grandfatherly letter about my paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, let me end by offering you, as part of your heritage, this saying ascribed to my other grandfather, John Hoyer, whom I knew well, who watched me grow from infancy and who lived in good health until he was over ninety. You carry your own hide to market."
- "Arnold said whoever was responsible for her sister's death eventually will face punishment. "I don't know why they did it to her," Arnold said. "But like I said, it's over with. But they've got to take their hide to market.""
- "Avlon: Rudy Giuliani . . . made it really clear in sort of a fit of fatalism that he doesn't feel responsible for his legacy. And that's ultimately his choice. You take your own hide to market."
Etymology
Probably from a German proverb, notably adapted by Karl Marx to describe the exploited worker who must sell himself (his own hide) in the labor market; the denotative metaphoric analogy is to bringing animal hides to market, but simultaneously also the self-evident connotative overtones are of chattel slavery and prostitution, in which human corporeality is exploited and personhood is devalued; in the quote below, the word hiding lends both its literal and figurative senses to the parsing: both literal skinning (of an animal) and also flogging and fleecing (of a person, that is, beating and robbing): : 1867, Karl Marx, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Capital, vol. 1 ch. 6: :: [T]he possessor of labour-power follows […] , timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
Usage
- American usage