The Surprising Origins of "Don’t Have a Cow" That Will Blow Your Mind!
Ever wonder why we tell someone to “not have a cow” when they start losing their cool? Sure, Bart Simpson’s been shouting that line like it’s the latest fashion statement, but guess what—it’s not just Springfield’s favorite troublemaker who coined the phrase. This zany expression actually dates back decades before The Simpsons ever graced our screens. But why “having a cow” for flipping out? Is it about cows at all, or something way more bizarre? Stick around, because cracking open the origins of this peculiar saying might just make you chuckle—or at least stop you from freaking out the next time life throws you a curveball.
Nowadays, having a cow is a phrase that’s probably most closely associated with Bart Simpson, who’s often heard (more so in older Simpsons episodes, it has to be said) telling people not to have a cow—or in other words, not to lose their temper, lose their composure, or just generally freak out. This might be one of Bart Simpson’s catchphrases; however, this is a phrase that predates The Simpsons by several decades.
In fact, most of the earliest written records of it date all the way back to the slangy speech of the 1950s, with the Oxford English Dictionary dating “having a cow” back to 1959.
But what does losing one’s temper have to do with “having a cow” at all? Well, although the origins of this phrase are admittedly somewhat hazy, it seems that its origins depend on precisely what the “have” in having a cow is meant to mean.
Origins of “Having a Cow”
As much as it might sound like “having a cow” refers simply to owning or perhaps controlling an animal, in fact the sense of the verb “have” that’s in use here is thought to be the same that you’d use when you talk of having a baby.
In other words—as the Oxford English Dictionary also somewhat delicately explains in its definition—“having a cow” came to refer to losing your composure in reference to “the upsetting and painful notion of giving birth to a cow.”
Animal-Inspired Idioms
If that sounds a little too bizarre to be true, then bear in mind that “having kittens” has likewise been used (in particular in British vernacular) to imply becoming upset or unnerved by something since the early 1900s. In that context, the reference was understandably the uneasy and unsettled nature of a female cat about to give birth, but in practice there were multiple versions and increasingly ludicrous variations of this kind of expression in use around the turn of the last century—including “to have zebras,” “to have puppies,” and even the ridiculously extended version, “to have kittens in the granary.”
In that context, having a cow (or “having a hairy cow,” as some early versions would also have it) seems just to be a 1950s extension of a far older yet no less ridiculous trend for concocting phrases describing someone’s loss of composure, by comparing them to an animal about to give birth. This just happens to be one of the only ones to have stood the test of time and remained in use into the 21st century—no doubt with more than a little help from Bart Simpson.
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