Meaning & Analysis
The proverb creates a graphic image of a baby who has so recently fed that milk might still be expelled from its nose, indicating extreme newness to the world.
Insights
Immaturity and Inexperience
The proverb is a blunt metaphor for extreme youth, immaturity, and inexperience. It suggests a person is so naive and unseasoned that they still bear the literal signs of infancy.
Unreadiness and Naivety
It implies a person's unreadiness for adult responsibilities or hardships. They are still metaphorically 'unweaned' and lack the toughness required to face the world.
Youthful Folly
Often used as a taunt or insult, the proverb dismisses someone's opinions or actions as childish and foolish, not to be taken seriously by seasoned adults.
Bodily Imagery and Social Critique
The proverb's power lies in its deliberately crude and visceral imagery, reflecting a pre-modern comfort with bodily humor to convey social critique. It evokes the physical dependency of infancy to powerfully dismiss someone as unready for the rigors of adult life, particularly in contexts like apprenticeships where novices were expected to mature quickly.
Psychology of Shame
This proverb serves as a psychological tool of social pressure, using shame to enforce norms of maturity. By linking a person's behavior to a primal, infantile image, it powerfully communicates that they have failed to transition from a state of protected innocence to one of worldly competence and resilience.
Literary and Proverbial Context
Shakespeare's use of a softened version—'his mother's milk were scarce out of him'—demonstrates its cultural currency in the Elizabethan era. It is part of a family of proverbs, like 'Cradle straws are scarce out of his breech', that use imagery of recent birth to mock inexperience.
Rhetorical Devices
Visceral Imagery
The proverb's effectiveness comes from its shocking and memorable visceral image of milk coming from a nose, which makes the associated insult about immaturity particularly potent.
Hyperbole
It uses exaggeration to equate a person's lack of experience with the state of a newborn baby, amplifying the perceived gap between their current state and required maturity.
Symbolism
'Mother's milk' serves as a powerful symbol for infancy, dependence, and a sheltered existence, which the subject has metaphorically not yet left behind.
Transcription
Quotations
Their mothers milke not wrung out of their nose yet, they knowe no more how to behauc themselues in this honest and needeful calling of Purse taking, then I do to peece stockings.
Your Minnie's Milk is no out of your Nose yet.
Your Mamma's Milk is scarce out of your Nose yet.
Shakespeare Citations
One would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him.
Cross References
Annotations
- Spoken to Novices who are not yet accustomed To be with, or serve Strangers, and take harsh usage ill.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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