Talk:A wigwam for a goose's bridle

Foreign equivalents
From the description given here, it seems that there exists (or did) an analogous expression in the United States, "Layovers to catch meddlers," the first word often being corrupted to "larovers," "layos," and "larroes," the last variant forming the title of a story by Manly Wade Wellman. Choess (talk) 03:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I was brought up in Norfolk,(UK) where the phrase my father used 50 years ago, went "it's a wigwam for a goose's neck". How widespread it was I am not sure JoBeauJoBeau (talk) 14:25, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

New Zealand
Where I grew up in New Zealand, the phrase was just a general expression of mystification over the identity of an object. It could have a mind-your-own-business feel to it, if the person using it knew what it was, but chose not to tell the person asking. Usually it was teasing rather than rebuking. It could also be used by someone who didn't know what the object was when someone else asked. Koro Neil (talk) 11:33, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree, my understanding is that the term meant nothing - not mind your own business. My father, who was born 1916, also believed it meant a mystery object. Given the American base to the expression, and the relative absence of geese in Australia, I would guess that the expression is North American in origin.  The definition implies the term is Australian.  There is no evidence of this, as far as I am aware.203.184.41.226 (talk) 05:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * If you read the source carefully the phrase is spoken by an English sailor (and the account is written by someone working for the East India Company ie almost certainly also an Englishman). It seems far more likely that the phrase originated in the UK and spread to the colonies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.36.75 (talk) 17:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

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Australian usage - dubious etymology
The Australian usage section presents a fanciful and unsourced etymology that frankly fails Occam’s razor vis a vis better sourced etymology.

Have marked unsourced claims and weasel words, but propose to delete this section. The mountain king (talk) 10:22, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely, delete away. I’m not sure I’ve come across a more fanciful attempt at making stuff up for some time. No sources, borderline references to the bastardisation of foreign language that could slip quickly and easily toward racial vilification, and that duck story is a corker, but nothing to do with the phrase.

I grew up in a household where the phrase was prevalent, but it always - always - meant the object of discussion was something silly and/or mysterious and most definitely always inconsequential. But it was always used as a noun, not a verb suggesting someone keep their own counsel.

My personal recall of the phrase’s use in the 1970s & 80s was that it was a companion to the one which provides breasts to male bovines. Both indicate objects of uselessness. The differentiation is - in my head anyway - that something that was as “useful as…” was a known quantity of little to no value; something that could be named but was useless. An object referred to as wigwam for a goose’s bridle was one which carried a similar level of folly to the bovine appendages, but the object itself was nameless and otherwise defied description, so the “wigwam” reference was used to provide it with a temporary name.

I’ve never heard the duck story before, especially in association with this phrase. And the thought of using such a whimsical turn nod phrase as a command for privacy I think just ruins one of my favourite pieces of linguistic ephemera. I’m not even sure how it would be used in a sentence to the effect of “go away and leave me alone”. Ayrendal (talk) 13:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)