Meaning & Analysis
Literally, it refers to cabbage (coleworts) that has been boiled a second time. This process renders the vegetable mushy, tasteless, and unappetizing, with the classical version stating that 'cabbage served twice is death'.
Insights
Tedious Repetition
The proverb is a metaphor for tedious and unwelcome repetition. It describes anything—a story, an argument, or an idea—that has become stale, tiresome, and irritating through excessive reuse.
Loss of Value through Overuse
Re-boiling the cabbage symbolizes how an idea or piece of information loses its freshness, impact, and value upon being repeated. What might have been acceptable once becomes worthless and unpalatable.
Intellectual Stagnation
As used by Shakespeare ('Twice-sod simplicity'), the phrase critiques a lack of intellectual originality and creativity. It represents a simple or crude idea presented over and over without fresh insight, signifying intellectual laziness.
Classical and Renaissance Rhetoric
Originating in classical antiquity and popularized by Erasmus, the proverb was a staple of Renaissance rhetoric, used by writers like Shakespeare and Jonson to critique unoriginality. The choice of cabbage, a common food, makes the metaphor for staleness universally understood.
A Warning against Tautology
The proverb is a timeless warning for communicators. It underscores the psychological principle that excessive repetition (semantic satiation) breeds contempt and diminishes the value of the message, advising speakers and writers to prioritize novelty and conciseness.
Psychology of Boredom
The proverb taps into a visceral, sensory experience—the unpleasant taste and texture of overcooked cabbage—to create a powerful negative association with the abstract concept of tedious repetition, making the critique more impactful.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The act of re-boiling cabbage serves as a powerful metaphor for the concept of stale, repetitive, and unoriginal communication.
Hyperbole
The classical variant, 'cabbage served twice is death', uses exaggeration to powerfully convey the extreme unpleasantness and intellectual 'death' caused by tedious repetition.
Sensory Imagery
The proverb evokes the unpleasant sensory experience of eating mushy, overcooked cabbage, creating a strong, visceral aversion to the abstract idea of staleness in discourse.
Transcription
Quotations
Crambe bis posita mors.
Crambe twyse sod is death. . *Nowe this Crambe was in olde tyme much vsed in feastes and bankettes, but if it were twyse sod it was so 'lothed and abhorred, that the Grekes made a prouerb on it. For as often as they wolde signifi a thyng agayne, and agayne repeted not without tedyousnes a greuauance, they sayde forthwith in theyr langnge. Crambe twyse serued is death.
Theese repetycions moue irckesomeness to the reader, yea even if it be but meanly learned, neuer a whit les then colewortes twise sod.
Which I must omitte, least I set before you, Colewortes twise sodden.
These coleworts were sodden enough once before, that they need not be set on again.
Your wife an honest woman, Is meate twise sod to you sir.
The same verses i' th' same tune instills, Poore School-masters this twice boil'd Lettuce kills.
Crambe bis cocta . . appliable to such who grate the ears of their Auditors with ungratefull Tautologies, of what is worthless in it selfe.
To make one to eat Colewarts twice heated, viz. to use Repetitions and Tautoligies in ones discourse, that the Company is weary of them.
A Tale twice told, is Cabbage twice sod.
Shakespeare Citations
Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus! O thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.