Beating around the bush not for spring chickens

“To beat around the bush” has come to be used most generally as an indication of evasiveness, skimming around the truth, not confronting issues head-on or even of being slightly less than honest. It would seem, however, that being a bush-beater was quite a noble occupation, but the expression is no spring chicken either.

Again, various sources offer slight variations in the origins of this idiom. It does, however, seem clear that it originated from the days of the noble sport of hunting. Not keen to personally put themselves in danger of being confronted, directly or by surprise, by the wild animals they were hunting – or perhaps merely too lazy to do some tracking before they took aim – noblemen would rent workers to beat the bushes (make noise in the wood or forests) to chase the animals into clear sight.

It is said this technique was mostly used for boar- and bird hunting.

No wonder that some sources speculate that the phrase "beat around the bush" is a shorter version of an old phrase, “to beat the bushes for”, which meant that someone was seeking something with very little effort.

One source claims the phrase “could have been used as early as 1520”. Another claims that “this term was first recorded in 1572", and yet another that “the first recording of this phrase is in the 1400s."

Whichever is correct, it is clear that the expression is no spring chicken anymore – a phrase that comes from the days when it was impossible to raise chicks during the cold winter months, so a chicken brought to market in the spring was prized for its youth and fresher flavour.

Some eateries still describe the freshness of their poultry as spring chicken, although modern poultry farming makes this a case of beating about the bush. The same features that made the original spring chicken so prized are now duplicated all-year round – year in and year out in heated incubators.

Unfortunately for us humans, not the same can be said about spouses and/or lovers.