"Any Port In A Storm"

[Don Cuevas]

I was looking up Spanish sayings and refrains, and found this item, on
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Spanish_proverbs

A falta de pan, buenas son tortas.
Alt: A falta de pan, galletas
Alt: A falta de pan, tortillas (Mexico, Guatemala)
Alt: A falta de pan, casabe (República Dominicana)
Translations:
If there's no bread, cakes will do.
In place of bread, cakes are good.
Alt. Trans.: If there's no bread, have crackers
Interpretations:
Settle for the next best thing.
Beggars can't be choosers.
In times of need, kindness is especially sweet.
Equivalent English proverb: "Any port in a storm."

(Emboldened by me.)

[Deleted]

There appears to be no French equivalent for this, although one can only find explanations of the phrase along the lines of "Il faut accepter n’importe quel abri quand il y a des difficultés." (No refuge must be refused in case of difficulty.)

However, if one follows the gist launched by Don Cuevas, the term is:

Faute de grives, on mange des merles.

Literally: If you can't catch thrushes, eat blackbirds.

And this expression is extended into the following foreign equivalents:

German: In der Not frisst der Teufel Fliegen. (When in need, the devil eats flies;)
Spanish : A falta de pan buenas son tortas. (When you have no bread, flatbread is good.)
English : Half a loaf is better than none.

I kind of prefer the maritime expression. More adventurous!

[Kimby]

Interpretations:
Settle for the next best thing.

Hardly, this port is better than the original...

[paristraveler]

English : Half a loaf is better than none.

I loved JR Ewing's logic of Dallas fame when he said, "Thirty percent of sump'n's better than 50% a nuthin'"

[Kimby]

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

[hwinpp]

Apr 8, 2010 21:18:19 GMT kerouac2 said:

There appears to be no French equivalent for this, although one can only find explanations of the phrase along the lines of "Il faut accepter n’importe quel abri quand il y a des difficultés." (No refuge must be refused in case of difficulty.)

However, if one follows the gist launched by Don Cuevas, the term is:

Faute de grives, on mange des merles.

Literally: If you can't catch thrushes, eat blackbirds.

And this expression is extended into the following foreign equivalents:

German: In der Not frisst der Teufel Fliegen. (When in need, the devil eats flies;)
Spanish : A falta de pan buenas son tortas. (When you have no bread, flatbread is good.)
English : Half a loaf is better than none.

I kind of prefer the maritime expression. More adventurous!

Similar to your example, also German:

Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul.

You don't examine the teeth of a horse that was given to you as a present (to check its age).

[Deleted]

Well, that one exists in English ("Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."), but it's another one of which I am unaware if there is a French equivalent.

[Deleted]

"A cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents"

[hwinpp]

And I didn't know/ had forgotten about the French and English versions. Does one of you or anyone else know which was first? Or is there some kind of proto Indoeuropean saying along those lines? Do Slavic languages have something similar?

[Deleted]

The phrase was originally "don't look a given horse in the mouth" and first appears in print in 1546 in John Heywood's "A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue", where he gives it as:

"No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth."

I would expect that it can be traced all the way back to at least Roman times, though.