Ohio State University Extension

This article is online at http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=3610

04/24/2006

Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Sweat Like a Pig (for the Week of April 23, 2006)

Writer:

Kurt Knebusch
knebusch.1@osu.edu
330-263-3776

Dear Twig: What does it mean to “sweat like a pig”?

It means to really, really sweat. To have a lot of sweat on your skin. To drip and drip with beads of sweat.

(OK, yeah, it might sound gross. Or wet. But sweat comes from exercise, like playing baseball or rowing a boat. And exercise makes us happy and healthy.)

But get this: Pigs don’t actually sweat! Nope, unlike people, pigs lack eccrine (“EK-rin”) sweat glands in their skin. (You, you have millions!) Eccrine sweat glands pump out sweat to keep your body temperature steady. Sweating cools you off when you need it. Pigs, instead, cool off by lying in cool, cool water or mud. Or by living in not-hot, just-right barns.

English teachers call “sweat like a pig” an idiomatic (“id-ee-o-MAT-ik”) expression: a group of words that makes no sense, at least not based on the actual words (Pigs don’t sweat!), but the people who use it all know what it means.

Explaining this makes me sweat like a pig. Get the picture? Sure you do. Ew!

Twig

P.S. Also unlike people, pigs have lots of apocrine sweat glands — more for scent than sweat!

Note: “Apocrine” is pronounced either “AP-uh-krine” or “AP-uh-krin.” Sources included “The Pig as a Model for Human Wound Healing” (Wound Repair and Regeneration, 2001), “Reactions of Pigs to a Hot Environment” (American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 2005) and “Evaporative Cooling in the Pig (Nature, 1965). Find a long list of idiomatic expressions — “Sell like hot cakes,” “Ants in your pants,” “Keep your eye on the ball,” etc., at http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/list.php.