Meaning & Analysis
Literally, the phrase means that someone has conducted successful business at a market, achieving a profitable or advantageous result from their transactions.
Insights
Seizing Opportunity
The proverb metaphorically describes the successful seizing of any opportunity. It extends the idea of a good trade to any situation where a person has skillfully and advantageously capitalized on the circumstances.
Successful Achievement
It serves as a broader metaphor for achieving any desired goal or favorable outcome, especially through negotiation or persuasion. The 'market' represents the situation, and 'making' it means concluding it successfully.
Social and Romantic Success
In a social or romantic context, it means to successfully win favor, persuade someone, or achieve a desired social standing, as if completing a successful negotiation.
The Market as a Social Metaphor
The proverb reflects the centrality of the market in early modern life, not just as a place of commerce but as a primary forum for social interaction and opportunity. It elevates this everyday setting into a powerful metaphor for life's broader negotiations and endeavors.
Economic Framing of Success
This phrase illustrates a growing commercial mindset in the 16th and 17th centuries, where personal, social, and even romantic achievements are framed in the transactional language of business. Success in any field is equated with a profitable outcome.
Psychology of Agency
The proverb underscores a psychology of proactive opportunism. The individual actively 'makes' their market, implying skill, strategy, and the agency to turn a situation to one's advantage, rather than passively awaiting fortune.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The entire phrase operates as a metaphor, where the concrete action of succeeding in a commercial 'market' is used to represent success in any abstract endeavor.
Idiom
The expression is a classic idiom, where the collective meaning—to succeed or capitalize on an opportunity—is distinct from the literal definitions of the individual words.
Synecdoche
The term 'market' functions as a synecdoche, representing not just the physical place but the entire ecosystem of opportunity, negotiation, and potential for gain.
Transcription
Quotations
Well sir, if your market may be made no where els, home again.
I stepping to her with a dunstable tale made vp my market.
Is it even So? Quack's thread is fairly spun, Quack may go home again, his market's done.
He knows how to make his market (make use of his time) well enough.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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