My office was discussing what the origin of the phrase "like trying to find a needle in a haystack." I tried finding it via google and ask.com. That didn't work. So now I am "phoning a friend."

Any one of you extremely well-knowledged people have an idea? (by the way, I am not being sarcastic, some of you are really, really smart)

ummm.....no idea.

that sounds like something colin or sluyter would know.

From here:
"Since the early 1500s there have been similar expressions to describe things difficult to find: "like finding a needle in a meadow of hay" and "like finding a pin's head in a cartload of hay." In the mid-1800s the expression became "needle in a haystack.""

And from here:
"needle in a haystack - impossible search for something relatively tiny, lost or hidden in something that is relatively enormous - the first use of this expression, and its likely origin, is by the writer Miguel de Cervantes, in his story Don Quixote de la Mancha written from 1605-1615. According to Bartlett's, the expression 'As well look for as needle in a bottle of hay' (translated from the original Spanish) appears in part III, chapter 10. 'Bottle' is an old word for a bundle of hay, taken from the French word botte, meaning bundle. Brewer (1870-94 dictionary and revisions) lists the full expression - 'looking for a needle in a bottle of hay' which tells us that the term was first used in this form, and was later adapted during the 1900's into the modern form."

Awesome! Thank you, Jordan. (One of the very, very smarts on this forum.)

Aww, thank you.

No, no. Thank you.

The other question about this is were they referring to a needle as in to sew or were they referring to a needle of hay?

I think it would be even harder to find one specific needle of hay in a haystack then it would be to find a needle. Be it bone, wood, or metal.

I imagined it meant a sewing needle... my clue:


anyways, I saw a really cool Mythbusters episode where they split into two teams and each attempted to find 5 needles (3 different sized metal needles and 2 different sized bone needles) in their own enormous mound of hay...

Finding needles in haystacks sounds like a great excuse to build a giant electromagnet.

I saw that episode, too. And one of the teams did use a very powerful magnet, I think.

Someone I know thinks that the original phrase was referring to a needle of hay. They don't, however, know where that came from. This is why I am curious.

I suppose it is that I am a little word-picky and want to be sure just how much I am over-exaggerating the difficulty of something.