I was thinking about the phrase ‘The pot calling the kettle black’. It comes from a time where cooking was done over open fires and cookware would become visibly ashy. (Fun fact: It first appears and was perhaps coined by Cervantes in Don Quixote!)
What are some other idioms that have lost their literal connection to time? What would be a good modern replacement?
In Portuguese the equivalent expression is timeless: “o sujo falando do mal lavado” (the dirty one talking about the badly washed).
Always love idioms from other languages. Had a book called “Idioms Delight” that explored equivalents from several different cultures/languages.
in Hungarian it’s “the owl calling the sparrow ‘big-headed’” 😄
we usually shorten it to just “owl calling the sparrow” (doesn’t have the same ambiguous meaning as English)
In Arabic “The net is making fun of the sieve”
I didn’t mentioned it above, but found that very similar to it in Spanish where we say “El burro hablando de orejas al conejo” (the donkey talking about ears to the rabbit) which we shorten to “El burro hablando de orejas” (the donkey talking about ears)