ENGLISCH/832: Questions to Mrs. Gobbledygook (156) The gander's sauce (SB)

QUESTIONS   TO   MRS   GOBBLEDYGOOK

156. What sauce ist good for goose and gander?

Dear Mrs. Gobbledygook

...I would be very glad if you could tell me something about the following well-known idiom:

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

It is one of these things you hear fairly often, but makes no sense to me. ...

Yours

Juliette G. (from Monaco)

*

Dear Mrs G.

As you didn't write exactly what in this old fashioned idiom makes no sense to you I start right from the beginning: The first word is sauce. That's a tasty liquid that we pour over meat or other dishes.

Now, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A goose is a type of poultry like a very large chicken or a large duck. In fact it really is a bid like a duck but with a longer neck. Geese (that's the plural) are very noisy. They have a very loud voice. English people use the word goose to describe that type of bird in general. But if we want to talk specifically about a male goose we use the word gander. Now, if you are preparing a goose for cooking you use the same sauce whether it's a male or a female, whether it's a goose or a gander. Hence the expression in its literal meaning "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander".

But when we use that in an idiomatic sense we mean that, if one person or group of people is treated in one way, it's right that another person or group receives the same treatment. For example:

A: I'm taking a two hour lunch break today, because my boss took a two hour lunch break yesterday.

B: Oh, why not - What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Another example:

My husband goes out with his friends once a week. So why shouldn't I go out with mine. After all, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

So that is how the English use the expression "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander". It's perhaps a little old fashioned these days, but it is quite an acceptable expression, and as you said in your letter, still fairly often heard. There are other more modern idioms using the same animal:

To cook someone's goose

or

All his geese are swans

The first one means, that you take your revenge on someone, whereas the second one tells us, that everything, "he" has is a lot better, than what everybody else has.

Hoping this makes sense to you and won't by reading this turn your skin into goose-flesh, I wish you a lot of fun with English idioms in the future.

Yours

Mrs Gobbledygook

23 February 2009