Lipstick On A Pig - Etymology

Etymology

Pigs have long featured in proverbial expressions: a "pig's ear," a "pig in a poke," as well as the Biblical expressions "pearls before swine" and "ring of gold in a swine's snout." Indeed, whereas the phrase "lipstick on a pig" seems to have been coined in the 20th century, the concept of the phrase may not be particularly recent. The similar expression, "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear" seems to have been in use by the middle of the 16th century or earlier. Thomas Fuller, the British physician, noted the use of the phrase "A hog in armour is still but a hog" in 1732, here, as the Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796) later noted "hog in armour" alludes to "an awkward or mean looking man or woman, finely dressed." The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) recorded the variation "A hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog" in his book of proverbs The Salt-Cellars (published 1887).

The "lipstick" variant of the phrase is more modern (the word "lipstick" itself was only coined in 1880). The rhetorical effect of linking pigs with lipstick was explored in 1926 by Charles F. Lummis, in the Los Angeles Times, when he wrote "Most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks." However, the first recorded uses of "putting lipstick on a pig" are later. In an article in the Quad-City Herald (Brewster, Washington) from Jan. 31 1980, it was observed that "You can clean up a pig, put a ribbon on it's tail, spray it with perfume, but it is still a pig." The phrase was also reported in 1985 when The Washington Post quoted a San Francisco radio host from KNBR-AM remarking "That would be like putting lipstick on a pig" in reference to plans to refurbish Candlestick Park (rather than constructing a new stadium for the San Francisco Giants).