Meaning & Analysis
To arrive too late—especially to a meal—so that nothing remains; the latecomer ‘kisses the hare’s foot’ instead of getting any hare to eat.
Insights
Penalty of Tardiness
Signals the cost of showing up late: opportunities vanish, doors close, and one is left with the token of what was desired rather than the thing itself.
Scarcity and Timing
Reminds that goods and chances are finite and time-bound; when the portion is gone, wit or status cannot conjure it back.
Effort without Reward
Covers cases where one has ‘taken pains’ yet gains nothing—labour mis-timed is indistinguishable from idleness in its outcomes.
Social Etiquette
Doubles as a nudge toward punctuality and respect for communal schedules, especially at table where late arrival disrupts the shared rhythm.
Symbolic Consolation
The ‘kiss’ is a mock benediction for leftovers that don’t exist, a way of acknowledging defeat with a wry, civilized shrug.
Table-Culture Context
In premodern households, meals were served once; latecomers literally went hungry. The idiom crystallizes that economy of scarcity into a culinary image that everyone grasped.
Kin Sayings
Closely allied to ‘to dine with Duke Humphrey’ (go without dinner) and ‘to kiss the post’ (arrive after closing), all three being urbane ways to say: you’re too late—nothing for you.
Hare as Prize
Hare was valued game; to ‘kiss the foot’ parodies reverence for the animal while admitting one got no share. The part-for-whole joke sharpens the sense of missing out.
Multilingual Echoes
Early glossators equate the phrase with Italian and French locutions for arriving when ‘all is eaten,’ showing a pan-European repertoire of witty formulas for lateness.
From Household to Office
Modern analogues include missing a funding window or a filing deadline: the proverb generalizes to any time-sensitive queue where tardiness turns effort into emptiness.
Rhetorical Devices
Metonymy
‘Hare’s foot’ stands in for the entire missed meal; the part signifies the absent whole, heightening the irony.
Euphemism with Irony
‘Kiss’ softens the blow while mocking it—polite diction masks the stark fact of going hungry.
Alliteration/Consonance
The k/h/f sounds in ‘kiss the hare’s foot’ give the phrase a crisp, proverbial snap fit for quick social correction.
Elliptical Idiom
No subject or tense is needed; the bare infinitive functions as a label for a whole situation—arriving late and getting nothing.
Humorous Hyperbole
Kissing an animal’s foot exaggerates the emptiness of the reward, turning disappointment into a comic image.
Transcription
Quotations
Vpon payne to dyne with Duke Humfrie, or kisse the Hares foote.
To take paines and yet to get nothing to feede on, or as we say when one comes late that all haue dined or supped, to kisse the Hares foote, or else to kisse the post.
We had need Make haste away, vnlesse we meane to speed With those that kisse the Hares foot.
To come late, when all is eat up; The English say, to kiss the hares foot.
You must kiss the hares foot, or the cook.
You must kiss the post, or hares-foot.
Kiss the Hare's Foot.
I doubt you must kiss the hare's foot.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.