/wɛn ˈpɪɡz ˈflaɪ/
English idiom, informal. It will never happen.
How do people use When pigs fly
?
Informal and nearly always sarcastic. You tack it on after a promise you don’t believe: “He’ll pay you back? When pigs fly.” British speakers lean towards “pigs might fly” (often as “and pigs might fly”), Americans towards “when pigs fly”.
Also said pigs might fly, when pigs can fly
When pigs fly
in real sentences
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I’ll go with you when pigs fly.
Tatoeba, sentence by FeuDRenais2, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Yeah, right, he’ll get his act together. When pigs fly.
Tatoeba, sentence by Imp, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does When pigs fly
come from?
The idea of flying pigs as a byword for nonsense is old. Michael Quinion (World Wide Words) traces it to a Scottish proverb written down in 1586 in an edition of John Withals’s English-Latin dictionary: “pigs fly in the air with their tails forward”. Lewis Carroll used it in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), where the Duchess gives Alice “just about as much right” to think “as pigs have to fly”. English Wiktionary’s quotation for the exact wording “when pigs fly” comes from James Stephens’s Irish Fairy Tales (1920).
Mistakes learners make with When pigs fly
None for English speakers. For learners of English: putting “will” after “when”. It’s “when pigs fly”, never “when pigs will fly”, because English uses the present tense after “when” even for the future.
Other English idioms like When pigs fly
Spot a mistake in When pigs fly
?
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