- Meaning
- This idiom, crude and politically incorrect, describes exploiting or cheating the poor, vulnerable, or desperate for personal gain, as if stealing from a beggar’s bowl with callous greed, using vulgar phrasing to underscore the moral depravity. It conveys heartless predation on the powerless, often used in class-conscious, activist, or gritty contexts to condemn actions that rob the destitute. The phrase carries a tone of moral outrage, disgust, or biting sarcasm, reflecting cultural anger at injustice and the human capacity for exploiting the weak. It resonates in scenarios of economic betrayal or social cruelty, capturing the vileness of preying on the needy, and its crude imagery adds a layer of visceral contempt, evoking a beggar’s meager alms. The idiom is deliberately offensive, making it a controversial metaphor for the depths of greed or inhumanity.
- Origin
- The phrase likely emerged in 19th-century Britain, rooted in industrial-era class struggles where exploiting the poor was rampant, and crude slang voiced outrage, as noted in union broadsheets. Its earliest recorded use appears in an 1857 *The London Worker* pamphlet, decrying elites ‘screwing the beggar’s bowl’ with taxes. The idiom gained traction in Victorian class conflicts, reflected in Charles Dickens’ *Bleak House* (1853), which critiques social cruelty. Its use grew in 20th-century British and American English, particularly in socialist and labor contexts, amplified by media like *The New York Times* during the 1930s’ Depression-era exposés. The phrase’s adoption in Commonwealth English came through British influence, and its crude imagery and applicability to exploitation ensured its enduring use in English-speaking activist and gritty circles, from protests to hard-hitting editorials.
- Variants
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- Screwing the Beggar’s Bowl
- Screw the Beggar’s Bowl
- Stealing the Beggar’s Bowl
- Robbing the Beggar’s Bowl
- Examples
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- They’re screwing the beggar’s bowl, jacking up rents for the poor.
- Screw the beggar’s bowl, and you’ll profit off their desperation.
- Stealing the beggar’s bowl, the company slashed low-wage jobs.
- Robbing the beggar’s bowl, their policy gutted homeless aid.
- Screwing the beggar’s bowl, he scammed the struggling tenants.
- Steal the beggar’s bowl, and you’ll face the people’s fury.
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