Perhaps not the most common turn of phrase, ‘pig in a poke’ is, nonetheless, quite a timely idiom insofar as what one expects versus what they get. (I’m thinking of myriad politicians in Congress right now.) So, what exactly is a pig in a poke?
The origin dates back to the 16th Century; poke is what most of us (Americans) call a sack. Setting the scene … Nowadays, if you have a hankering for ham, you would likely head to the deli counter. Back in the 1500s, however, you had to carve that ham by purchasing the entire pig.
Since a sack — nay poke — was the most suitable container to stuff a piglet for sale in at the local market, merchants would package their goods in a poke that was often knotted at the top, preventing customers from seeing what they were buying.
When an unsuspecting buyer brought his poke home and went to release the piglet, a chicken, duck, goose, or other animals (of lesser value than a pig) would come out of the bundle instead.
The proverb encapsulates the Latin advice to purchasers: caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware; always inspect the goods before you pay for them. Make the seller open his poke and show you the pig within.
According to etymologists, the first recorded use of the phrase appeared in 1546, in the English writer John Heywood’s collection, Proverbs, “Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke.”
Around 1555, Heywood included it in his other famous compilation work, Epigrammes, in its near-modern iteration: “I will never bye [sic] the pig in the poke”
Bonus tidbit: Variations on the idiom exist in several different languages, including Swedish (Köp inte grisen i säcken!), French (Acheter chat en poche), and German (Die Katze im Sack kaufen). The big difference is these other cultures swap out a pig for a cat. For example, Die Katze im Sack kaufen translates as, “to buy a cat in a sack,” which is a distant relative to the phrase: “let the cat out of the bag.” That’s another blog.