neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring love

neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • phrase idiomatic Unsuitable for anyone or anything; unfit for any purpose.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The three foods are metonyms for those things suitable to each of a Mediæval society’s classes of people; fish represents the clergy, flesh represents commoners, whilst red herring represents paupers; the three classes are simplistically regarded as exhaustive.

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