Where did this saying come from?
Such is life, and every day is getting sucher and sucher.
It doesn't make any sense to me, perhaps because I'm not a native English speaker. Can someone explain?
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2"Such is life" is well-understood in English, but I've never heard the "sucher and sucher" part. Have you seen this more than once, or did you just encounter one person trying to be clever?– Monica CellioJul 20, 2011 at 14:10
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I think it's from "Alice in Wonderland"– user51812Sep 12, 2013 at 9:55
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given that Alice in Wonderland is a free ebook, could you say where in there is comes from?– Matt E. ЭлленSep 12, 2013 at 10:48
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1“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass– user92383Sep 24, 2014 at 12:32
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1 Answer
Ah, well -- such is life.
That's the sort of thing one says when Murphy's Law rears its ugly head. Something has gone according to plan -- just not your plan. You know the sort of thing: you finally found that classic '50s roadster to restore, and ten minutes after you purchase it (and before you've managed to get it insured) a bull moose decides that it's a potential rival for the local really hot cow's romantic attentions and batters it into a heap of twisted tin foil. Sometimes life is like that.
Sometimes life stays that way for an annoyingly long time. That's the "sucher and sucher" part. No, there's no such word as "sucher" (at least not in any recognised sense) -- it's just a way of extending the "such is life" cliché to meet the ongoing run of rotten luck. People understand that "such is life" means that you've had one bit of bad luck, and they can read the "sucher and sucher" to mean that it just keeps going and going like the Energizer bunny.
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1+1 for the bull-moose example. :-) OP, I would advise against emulating the "sucher and sucher" part; this is a good explanation of what it means, but it's not a normative phrase so people may think you're a little peculiar if you use it. Jul 20, 2011 at 14:37
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1@Stan, I don't feel that 'sucher and sucher' extends the time, but that it reaffirms the initial saying. This obviously happens again and again, but the emphasis is on the original statement getting even more true than initially thought.– UnreasonJul 20, 2011 at 14:43
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@Monica: I do not think this word [normative] means what you think it means. Jul 20, 2011 at 14:48
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@Tim: I would not use "normative" in that way either; but see the comments in english.stackexchange.com/questions/28882/… for the fact that, yes, plenty of people do so, so it is no longer the case that "it doesn't mean that". Jul 20, 2011 at 16:56