Walking on Eggshells
CEO Camp
It feels a little stressful today. Nowadays, we are having “CEO Camp”. We have invited the principals and vice-principals to our institute so they can experience our new facilities. It is sort of an advertisement as well. Our institute is a provincial institute and our existence relies upon students coming to our camps. We need the big cheeses from the schools to send their students here. So, the supervisors are taking it seriously. However, the stress is usually passed down and we are walking on eggshells to avoid any troubles. So far, the camps are going well, but the supervisors are worried that the visiting faculty members are too embarrassed to use their English skills. While I was helping a group learn how to program a robot, a supervisor tapped me on the should and told me to use as much Korean as possible. I replied, “I already am… none.” I hope he wasn’t offended by my joke. That group was doing fine anyways. I think they enjoyed that more than the following groups where only my (Korean) co-teacher demonstrated the robot. There is only one more day of this, so it is all good.
Meaning
Walking on eggshells means that you must be cautious. It is usually used when talking about someone you need to be careful around. You ought to be careful with what you say or do because they might be offended or upset if you do something wrong. Imagine a room full of eggshells. It would hurt to walk on them, so you should be careful and avoid them. That is the idea with this phrase; you have to avoid sensitive subjects to navigate an interaction.
Example: My wife is angry with me because I hung out with my friends last night. So, today I am walking on eggshells around her.
Origin
It is generally agreed that walking on eggshells came into use during the 1800s. However, it is difficult to get a citation for the first usage. The OED dates it to 1860. It was likely developed from the older phrase, walking on eggs. Variations of walking on eggs have been around since the 16th century. A post on English Stack Exchange dates the phrase to the 1576 book, The rocke of regard diuided into foure parts: “Now last to you my legges, which be my bodies stay, Frame not your gate as men on egges, whom busting doth affray.” A more familiar version of the phrase appears in 1593 where William Reynolde writes, “… as though they walked upon eggs and feared they breaking of them…”
I am underwhelmed by how little information is available on this phrase. It seems that chicken farming was so common that this metaphor was ubiquitous and easy to understand. Since not everyone has a chicken farm today, we could use a little explanation. There are a couple of possible ways to explain this phrase. It may refer to how chickens walk carefully over their nest of eggs. Another explanation is that a farmer must be careful where he walks when he is searching for the latest eggs laid. Yet another suggestion is that farmers had to avoid stepping on eggshells when they collected the eggs so they would not disturb the chickens.
Walking on Legos
There are a few other phrases with a similar meaning. The idiom, on thin ice means that you have to be careful with your actions. Walking on broken (shattered) glass refers to a punishment for something. I propose that we change walking on eggshells to walking on Legos. It is a more relatable phrase. We all know how painful it is, so we need to be careful around children’s’ toys. As it turns out, our feet have a lot of nerve endings on the bottom. That is why it hurts so much. Did you know it would take 950 pounds of stacked Legos for one to crack? They are strong!
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Resources:
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/05/walking-on-eggs-or-eggshells.html
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/182137/origin-of-walking-on-eggshells
https://grammarist.com/idiom/walking-on-eggshells/
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A15046.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A10353.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a14664/stepping-on-lego/