wild goose never laid a tame egg
- idiom
- Informal
:
ganso salvaje nunca puso un huevo manso
- You can't expect order from that group; a wild goose never laid a tame egg.
Examples
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You can't expect discipline from someone who never learned it—a wild goose never laid a tame egg.
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When her risky scheme failed, he shrugged and said, 'wild goose never laid a tame egg.'
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Trying to find order in chaos is futile; after all, wild goose never laid a tame egg.
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A wild goose never laid a tame egg!
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You can't expect any rules from him; after all, wild goose never laid a tame egg.
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When the project failed spectacularly, she sighed, saying, 'wild goose never laid a tame egg.'
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He always acts unpredictably, proving that a wild goose never laid a tame egg.
Synonyms
1
9.8
A phrase people say to show something is very unlikely to happen
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
wild + goose + never + lay + a + tame + egg
The literal composition ('a wild goose' + 'never laid' + 'a tame egg') makes the image clear and points toward the metaphor that unruly parents produce unruly offspring, but the transfer from 'egg' to the expected behaviour of offspring and the proverb-like generalisation require pragmatic inference beyond simple word meanings. Because learners must infer the figurative mapping (egg → offspring/behavior) and recognise the proverbial usage, the expression is only partially predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Wild goose never laid a tame egg is a proverb that shows a simple picture: a wild goose will not lay a 'tame' egg. So, it means you should not expect calm or organized results from someone or something that is naturally wild or not trained.